Oaxaca Amsterdam

A genuine Oaxacan kitchen and one of Europe's best mezcal rooms, hiding in a Spuistraat cantina.

Joan Bagur spent over two decades cooking in Mexico before he brought Oaxaca to a former tourist-trap address on the Spuistraat, and it shows in the details nobody fakes: chapulines when they are in season, five different salsas built fresh daily for the tableside guacamole, and chicatana ants flown in from the fields around Oaxaca City. The kitchen splits into a casual streetfood side and a full dining room running toward a ten-course tasting menu, so a solo diner grabbing tacos and a couple booking the whole table's tasting menu both get treated seriously. Behind it all sits a proper mezcaleria, 32 bottles curated with a mezcal maestro from Destilerías Tlacolula, doing serious work in a room styled like a classic Mexican cantina. The trio of oysters, done three ways with tuna, cucumber-lime sorbet and Hermosillo machaca, is the dish worth building a table around. Iberian cochinita pibil and the black mole chicken are the heavier hitters if you are staying for dinner. It is part of the Sagardi hospitality group, which explains the polish, but the cooking itself reads as personal, not corporate.

Open daily 12:30-23:00, kitchen 12:30-15:00 and 18:00-22:00, mezcaleria until midnight; the lunch window is the easiest way into the tasting menu room without a wait.

Photo: Oaxaca Amsterdam