New York’s palate is decidedly broadening. There was a time when a restaurant couldn’t be overly faithful to its home cuisine, for fear of scaring off business. Boqueria, which opened last year, serves a version of Barcelonese market cuisine that’s more authentic than the average tapas joint, but is still significantly cleaned up and lightened for the American tastebud. Mercat is a new restaurant that deals in the same fare but pulls fewer punches. Tiled walls amplify the noise to realistic party-zone levels, the menu and specials slate are written uncompromisingly in Catalan, and every small plate is drenched in olive oil, mayonnaise, or both. That last factor was a sticking point for one West Coast restaurant of my acquaintance, whose chef’s insistence on oily authenticity repelled Californian palates in droves.

But Mercat is mobbed, even on a wet weeknight, both bars and all the little wooden tables full of stylish patrons guzzling wine and forking down tapas such as the patatas bravas ($9). That dish is on every Spanish menu in town, but only at Mercat is it covered with such a drenching of such a spicy aioli, so that each fried potato has its own bath of creamy orange sauce. The Spanish omelet ($11) is bigger and moister than most, filled with potato as well as chorizo (xoriç in Catalan) and completely covered in mayonnaise; if not divided several ways, it’s rich enough to fill one up for the whole meal. Boqueria serves pan amb tomaquet too, the tomato-rubbed Iberian garlic bread, but it’s nowhere near as garlicky as Mercat’s superior version ($4 for two slices), in which olive oil is not just a condiment or a lubricant, but a featured ingredient, such that one can discern the distinctive buttery character of the arbequina olives from which it’s pressed.

Nothing is immune from the heavy heartiness that forms the cuisine’s aesthetic. Delicate pea shoots ($8), among whose leaves one might hope to find a little refreshment, are wilted in garlicky oil, with raisins and pine nuts adding a sweet density. A mix of mushrooms ($12), heavily sautéed, are strewn with crunchy little shoestring fries and capped with a runny fried egg, which the server urges diners to mix in. The closest thing to a salad, with shredded fennel, greens, and orange segments ($14), also includes little fried pieces of sweetbreads, of course, to pile on the richness. The tipoff comes from the fact that the dish is listed, along with the potatoes and scrumptious, ultra-moist salt cod fritters ($10) in the first section of the menu, “Fregits,” a Catalan word which translates not to “starters” but to “fried.” Mercat is the real thing.

The two executive chefs, who have worked at Jean-Georges as well as in Catalonia, cook chickpeas and dried apricots with mint; crumbled morcilla blood sausage forms a salty, earthy backdrop to the dish ($11), which calls to mind North Africa as much as it does Spain. An unusually tangy romesco sauce, made with tomatoes, peppers, and garlic, adds flair to otherwise dull little hunks of grilled monkfish ($17), with seasonal favorite ramps substituting for the traditional calçots, which are their Barcelonese leek-family relative. Fideus ($16), short pasta squiggles rendered jet-black and marine-zesty with cuttlefish ink, are dotted with succulent bits of cuttlefish and topped, of course, with an unnecessary, hearty helping of mayonnaise.

From a station in the middle of the restaurant, cheeses and cold cuts are sliced to order: Serrano ham, cured pork loin, xoriç and sobrassada, and so forth. Twentyfour dollars buys a combination platter of meats. Cheeses are $14 for three or $28 for seven, and include familiar manchego and ibores as well as intriguing offerings like máo (a.k.a. mahon), a buttery Minorcan hard cheese with a rich tang, and valdéon, a potent blue made from cow’s and goat’s milk.

At the ham station and the open grill, staff can be observed drinking arcing rivulets of wine from porrones, wine cruets that squirt their contents sideways in long streams when tilted. Diners can order their own *porron* of Pinord rosé or white for $15, though the waitress cautions that the vessels are “more for fun than for really savoring the wine.” Those who prefer the savoring approach will find a fine list of all-Spanish wines, cavas, and sherries, served in more familiar types of glassware.

On my first visit to Mercat, I skipped dessert, overwhelmed by the weight of what had come before, and it turns out that’s the right approach. A thin Catalan crème brûlée ($6) is one of those whose caramelized sugar top is the only part worth eating; dry, dark, doughnut-like churros are the rare exception to the principle, here and elsewhere, that frying improves everything.

Mercat (45 Bond St., between Bowery and Lafayette Street, 212-529-8600).