MEET A new wave OF MEXICAN RESTAURANTS
The evolution of Mexican cooking in the GTA continues as chefs dive deeper into regional cuisines
On a snowy afternoon, Luis Bautista and Viridiana Cano of Puerto Bravo restaurant in the Little India neighbourhood are discussing what will be on their new menu. It’s a small restaurant, with exposed brick and a handful of bistro chairs inside. The food here is an ode to the cooking in Tampico, a port city in the Gulf of Mexico in the southeastern part of the state of Tamaulipas.
“We know people like our food, I think it’s time to reveal some new dishes,” said Bautista. “I’ve been cooking in Toronto for a long time, it feels like now there’s enthusiasm and an appetite for more Mexican cooking.”
Toronto has Mexican restaurants spanning back decades, and you’ll find pockets of them in neighbourhoods such as St. Clair’s Hillcrest Village, Kensington Market and the Danforth. There are also a handful of Mexican restaurants at the famed Plaza Latina in North York. In recent years, there’s been a wave of new Mexican food establishments and shops popping up in all corners of the city and extending to Prince Edward
County.
Now, there’s a cabal of cooks diving deeper into regionally rooted traditional cooking while, at the same time, taking the cuisine in new directions.
“Tampico is a city that is known for its unique flair of Mexican cuisine. It is very seafood friendly and very bright in flavours” said Bautista.
Bautista and Cano quickly gained a following for their short menu of tacos, octopus tostadas and shrimp aguachile, but they were eager for their next move: a deeper dive into Tampico
cuisine. Bautista pulls inspiration from his parents’ restaurant, Lap Tripa, in Tampico.
“There are a number of dishes that we are waiting to put on the menu, dishes that we haven’t seen in Toronto before,” he said.
The winter menu update comes after much encouragement from his regular customers.
Cano presents one of the restaurant’s most popular tacos: a corn tortilla topped with fried shrimp and sour cream. A few slices of pickled onions and then a healthy serving of salsa brava, an adobo Bautista makes using three types of Mexican chiles reconstituted with butter, lard and orange juice. “This usually takes us 28 hours to make, it is a long process,” said Cano.
Bautista then brings a plate of cooked oysters still in their shells called ostiones a la diabla, inspired by Oysters Rockefeller and a popular dish at restaurants in Tampico. The oysters are marinated in a Maggi and chipotle sauce then topped with bacon and a generous amount of asadero cheese before broiling.
“You should eat this immediately,” said Bautista. The Maggi sauce brings a punch of umami and herbal quality to the fleshy oyster, complemented by a thick blanket of gooey cheese.
While the U.S. might be better known for Mexican cuisine, Canada is catching up.
“We can’t compete with the large Mexican population in the United States, and the deep rooted history of migration there,” said Samantha Valdivia, chef and co-owner of La Condesa in Prince Edward County. “So, it has taken some time for us to go beyond tacos and the kinds of generational restaurants our parents may have opened.”
In 2017 about 11 per cent of America’s population identified as Hispianics of Mexican origin. By contrast, the latest Canadian census in 2016 shows about 0.37 per cent of its population identifying as Mexican.
Valdivia previously cooked at Corktown’s Cocina Economica, owned by the Playa Cabana restaurant group and focused on dishes such as whole sea bream marinated in adobo before being wrapped and grilled over charcoal; as well as bone-in lamb cooked barbacoastyle in ancho-chile adobo.
“We were bringing some new dishes to Toronto at the time. Maybe it was too soon for a restaurant like that to exist,” said the Mexicanborn chef.
Cocina Economica closed in 2019. Vildivia and her partner (and later La Condesa sous chef ) Rizal Adam hosted pop-ups at Prince Edward County’s Parsons Brewing Company, which led to the pair finding a space to open La Condesa, named after a neighbourhood in Mexico City, later that spring.
“Mexico City is a very exciting food city, it is very progressive and I think it’s one of the reasons why we have so much interest in the food here,” said Vildiva. “The nixtamalization revolution is one that comes to mind immediately, where chefs were looking at ancient ways to process corn instead of buying processed corn flour from the grocery store. It also feels like there’s more experimentation.”
One of the restaurant’s signature items is the flauta: fried corn tortillas are served on a bed of tomatillo sauce, layered with potatoes and spinach and cotija cheese.
This excitement from diners is also encouraging Bautista and Cano to further explore Tampico cuisine.
“When we first opened, I wasn’t sure how strong I could go into my culture. But the response has been overwhelming, so even within a few months we are adding new items,” said Bautista.
He then brings out a plate of shrimp smothered in a dark brown sauce.
The shell-on shrimp is deep fried, then cooked a second time with the house adobo. Compared to other presentations on fried shrimp with sauce I’ve had at Mexican restaurants, this had an intense smoky aroma, with deep Earthy tones from the guajillo, chipotle, morita chiles.
“This is something classically Tampico, I think you will love it. We call it camarones en salsa bravas,” said Bautista.