Did someone say colour? The design brief at El Primo Sanchez, which opens this week in Paddington, requested a nod to the colourful local bars of Mexico. And it has delivered, with high-tech ceiling lighting enjoying a wide enough colour palette to replicate the most obscure national flag.

It also allows El Primo Sanchez to change its mood. A collaboration from the crew behind the award-winning Maybe Sammy and the Public Hospitality Group, El Primo Sanchez is writing the next chapter of the Oxford Street pub formerly known as The Rose.

"We saw this pub, we fell in love with it but we didn't want to do another Aussie pub," says Stefano Catino, co-owner of the Maybe Sammy Group. "I love Australia, but I'm not from here. I don't know pies, I don't know cricket."

The mood board for the venue started with P. Sanchez, "a slightly mysterious, sometimes loose" fictional character. Then they added real-life Mexican-born chef Alejandro Huerta, whose CV stretches from Alinea in Chicago to Copenhagen's Noma and Chica Bonita in Manly.

"Authenticity is really important," says Catino, Italian-born but obsessed with Mexico. "I've travelled there and there's something about Italians and tequila."

Having steered venues on lists of the best bars in the world, Maybe Group has drafted a bar team with some Latin American heritage to punch out a cocktail list that jumps from a TNT (tequila and tonic) to a Charro Negro (AKA Batanga) made with tequila and the Mexican corn liqueur Nixta that the bar claims "would go up in flames if it was any smokier". Highballs are served in tradional clay jugs.

"El Primo Sanchez is a bar, but one where food plays a big part," says Catino. "You can have a quick bite or a meal."

The menu includes al pastor tacos ($12) made with 12-hour achiote-marinated pork belly cooked over coals, snapper ceviche ($23) and roasted corn ($14).

"My favourites are the papas con chorizo, which includes whipped Italian 'nduja, and the tiger prawns with chilli butter," Catino says.

Open Wed-Thu 4.30pm-12.30am; Fri-Sat 4.30pm-1am (Sundays from March).

27-33 Oxford Street, Paddington, instagram.com/elprimosanchezsydney