PAPALOTE Is What Happens When Home Travels With You.

After more than 20 years in France and a Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris, Mexican chefs Kike Casarrubias and Mon Estrada are opening Papalote in Barcelona, bringing Mexican memory, French technique and Mediterranean influence into the next chapter of their story.

A restaurant can be a new address. For Kike Casarrubias and Mon Estrada, Papalote is something more complicated: a new chapter in a story that began in Mexico, developed in France, and is now arriving in Barcelona.

The two chefs met in Cuernavaca, Mexico, before building much of their careers in France, where their Paris restaurant OXTE earned a Michelin star in 2021. But Papalote is deliberately not an attempt to recreate what they built there. It is an evolution.

“We do not want to repeat what we have done in Paris, but rather evolve through everything we have learned,” they say. “PAPALOTE is a new chapter in our story.”

The choice of Barcelona feels less like a departure than a continuation. The city has always attracted them for its energy, people and gastronomic culture, but there is also something more personal in the connection. The shared language brings them closer to home, while Barcelona's relationship with the Mediterranean, its produce and its culture of eating around the table resonate naturally with the way they think about hospitality. For them, the city is not simply where Papalote is opening. It is becoming part of what Papalote is.

HOME, FROM A DISTANCE

There is an interesting paradox in spending more than 20 years away from the place you come from: sometimes distance makes you feel more connected to it.

“Being far from home has made us feel more Mexican than ever,” they say.

France became an essential part of their lives. It gave them their professional education, shaped their understanding of gastronomy and allowed them to grow both personally and creatively. But leaving Mexico also changed the way they saw the country they had left behind.

Distance sharpened the details: the flavours, aromas, traditions and childhood memories that might otherwise have remained invisible in the familiarity of everyday life. Today, they describe themselves as carrying the best of both places.

Mexico is the memory.

France is the education.

Barcelona is the next transformation.

And that idea of transformation is built directly into the name. Papalote means butterfly in Nahuatl, a symbol of changing form, moving forward and growing without losing where you came from. It is a fitting name for a restaurant that is essentially about evolution without erasure.

TWO MEXICOS, ONE TABLE

Their relationship with Mexico is not singular either. Kike comes from Toluca, surrounded by mountains and a very different landscape from Mon's Acapulco, where the sea shapes the rhythm of life. Rather than trying to flatten those differences into one idea of Mexican cuisine, they allow both landscapes to exist in their cooking.

From Acapulco comes the freshness and warmth of the sea, expressed through dishes such as ceviche. From Toluca come deeper, more rounded flavours, including meats smoked with pine cones. Mezcal from Guerrero connects them to another layer of home.

They describe the relationship between Toluca and Acapulco almost like a sunset, where the sea meets the sky. Two different landscapes becoming one image.

That same idea appears in the way they talk about memory. Their strongest food memories are not necessarily elaborate dishes or technically perfect recipes. They remember beans, rice, traditional root vegetables, grilled meats and whole fish cooked over charcoal.

But more than the food itself, they remember the people. The company, the aromas, the warmth of sitting around a table with family.

“For us, culinary memory is deeply connected to emotions and to the people with whom we share those moments.”

Why this matters is because Papalote is not trying to reproduce the past. It is trying to understand what the past left behind.

NOT A BLEND, A LANGUAGE

There is a temptation, when talking about chefs who have lived and worked across countries, to describe their food as a fusion of cultures. Kike and Mon reject that idea. They don't see Mexican and French influences as two separate identities that need to be balanced.

“Mexico is part of our identity and our memories, while France has given us an education and a set of tools that have enriched our approach to cooking.”

Eventually, those influences stopped feeling like separate ingredients. They became their own language. That is perhaps what Papalote represents most clearly. Not Mexican food adapted for Barcelona, or French technique applied to Mexican ingredients, but two people cooking from the totality of what they have experienced. Now Barcelona gets to enter the equation too.

THE LIFE OF THE KITCHEN

There is another reason the restaurant feels personal: Kike and Mon are not only partners in the kitchen. They are life partners too.

Sharing both life and work means there is nowhere to hide from disagreement, which they describe not as a problem but as part of the creative process.

“Creativity begins with asking questions, questioning what we do and always searching for the best way to express our vision.”

The relationship is built around honesty, curiosity and, importantly, respect for the ingredients themselves. Every creation starts with understanding an ingredient, recognising its qualities and finding a way to bring out the best in it without losing its essence.

It is the same philosophy they seem to apply to themselves. Keep the essence, let everything around it evolve.

AFTER THE STAR

OXTE's Michelin star in 2021 brought visibility and allowed them to reach a wider audience, but they say it did not fundamentally change what drives them.

The star was an important moment, the intention remained the same.

“To do things with love, passion, and respect for our craft.”

There is something reassuring about that simplicity. After years of building a Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris, they are not arriving in Barcelona with the need to prove that they can do it again.

They are arriving to see what happens when they stop repeating themselves. Papalote is therefore less about starting over than continuing forward. Mexico remains present. France remains present. Barcelona is simply the newest place to become part of the story.

For Kike and Mon, the ultimate ambition remains surprisingly simple: to make people happy, create special moments around a table, and leave every guest with a memory that stays with them. Which brings the story back to where it began. Memory is not something you leave behind when you travel.

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