Mole With a Mission Gastronomy Underground cooks up Mexican food for thought.

eight months ago, Pablo Rojas was roasting luxury chickens at the NoMad, and Roxanna Mejia was baking extravagant bread at Thomas Keller’s Per Se. The couple had moved to New York from Brownsville, Texas, to work in the city’s fine-dining kitchens, but when the pandemic hit, both were furloughed indefinitely. To support themselves and their young son, they decided to launch Gastronomy Underground (the motto: “Modern spirit, ancestral roots”) with the goal of exploring Mexico’s deeper culinary identity.

Originally, Rojas and Mejia imagined hosting small pop-up dinners, but they tweaked that vision into a service that delivers meals across south and central Brooklyn three days a week. On Tuesdays, for example, they offer a $45 Taco Feast for two, which includes homemade corn tortillas, either carnitas or a “black mole of brassicas,” 12 different toppings, and two sides. “We knew we weren’t just gonna do mindless takeout,” says Rojas. “Creativity has to go hand in hand with history.” Consider chiles en nogada—stuffed poblano chiles in a white walnut sauce. It is, says Rojas, a testament to the global complexity of the cuisine: Poblanos are “a Mexican chile that traveled to Morocco and got blended with bell peppers and then came back as a completely new pepper that Mexicans adopted as their own.” If Rojas and Mejia are clear about their mission, they’re also clear about what they’re not doing—“elevating” anything. “I don’t think Mexican food needs elevation at all,” says Rojas.

“It just needs understanding.”