European food in Mexico City: Spanish, French, Italian

What this section covers. European cooking in Mexico City — which is older and deeper here than visitors expect.

Spanish. The longest-established, and not only because of the conquest: the Spanish Civil War brought a large exile community to Mexico from 1939, and with it the Asturian, Basque and Galician societies, their clubs and their restaurants. Several of the oldest restaurants in the historic centre are Spanish, and the Casino Español has been serving since the nineteenth century.

French. The Porfirian period deliberately Frenchified the city — the layout of Reforma, the architecture of the Roma, the Palacio de Bellas Artes — and left a taste for French cooking that never went away. There is also a Franco-Mexican community descended from the Barcelonnette migration of the 1800s, who founded many of the city's department stores.

Italian. The most widespread, from trattorias in the Condesa to serious Roman and Neapolitan kitchens in Polanco and the Roma.

And the Argentine and Uruguayan grills, which arrived in numbers in the 1970s with the Southern Cone exiles and are now a fixed part of the city's eating: parrillas, empanadas and chivito.

Practical notes. The formal end books ahead. Mexican meal times apply whatever the cuisine: lunch at 14:00, dinner from 21:00.