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[title]‘A mole really doesn’t have that many ingredients,’ says Karla Zazueta as she counts the chiles, spices and nuts to blitz for a mole colorado. ‘Only eighteen, and most of them you can find in your cupboard!’
Moles are as central to Mexican cuisine as curries are to Indian and Malaysian cooking – yet they’re still rare to find on a Mexican menu in London. Zazueta, a Mexican food educator and author, is one of many chefs in the capital who wants to expand the understanding of Mexican cuisine beyond the taco – at a time when our appetite for them feels bigger than ever.
Over the last five years there’s been an explosion of taco spots popping up in London, each claiming to be more authentic than the last. In Dalston, basement taqueria Corrochio’s has recently expanded to street level, in a venue about four times the size of the previous. Not far up the road, Sonora Taquería opened their first bricks-and-mortar restaurant after the popularity of their stall in Netil Market. Earlier this year, Trejo’s Tacos arrived in Notting Hill, before CDMX opened up in Soho, to the delight of TikTok food blogger masses. Then, there’s Fonda, the new place from Kol chef Santiago Lastra, on track to open in October. That’s not to mention the growing popularity of places like El Pastor, Breddos Tacos and Zapote.
Partially thanks to the popularity of shows like Netflix’s Taco Chronicles and increased tourism to Mexico, London has never been hungrier for Mexican food – if it involves a tortilla, that is. But, while there’s no denying the deliciousness of tacos, there’s so much more to Mexican food: a fact a cohort of chefs are determined to prove.
Cooking up a storm
Zazueta’s debut cookbook, ‘Norteña’, delves into the cuisine of northern Mexico. Sure, the region has tacos – but in Baja California, where Zazueta grew up, the speciality is mariscos (seafood).
In addition to her book and educational instagram feed, Zazueta also holds Mexican cooking classes and supper clubs in her North Finchley home. ‘For each supper club I am focussing on food from one region of Mexico,’ she says. ‘July was food from Oaxaca but each month is a menu from a different state.’ Her menus always include an antojito, soup, and a main dish usually served with rice, beans and tortillas. (Whether or not the main is traditionally meant to be eaten as a taco, Zazueta still catches supperclub guests compelled to create one out of her dishes – a habit she’s not afraid to gently correct.)
We’re very big fans of double carbs
We sit down to enjoy the mole and she deftly rolls a fresh tortilla between her palms, using it as a utensil to guide pieces of chicken, rice and beans onto a fork. ‘One of the things I’ve been trying to teach people, not only with my cooking classes, but also with the supper clubs, is to show them that Mexican food has more to offer than tacos,’ she says.
Sarai Caprile, chef-founder of Comalera, uses her pop-ups as a chance to challenge the taco supremacy of London’s Mexican food scene. Her recent series at Doña in Stoke Newington is named ‘Vitamina T’, a tongue-and-cheek joke highlighting how vital dishes like tortas, tlayudas, tostadas and – yes – tacos are to Mexican street food culture. But while these dishes are a huge part of Mexico’s casual dining scene, they are really products of a deeper culinary heritage.
‘Yes, tacos are a dish, but they’re not at the same time,’ says Caprile. ‘A taco is just lots of different elements like salsa or a guisado (stew) put together in a tortilla. I think it would be cool to focus on the individual elements.’ As someone who grew up in Mexico City and has lived in London for the last five years, for her, Mexican street food is typified by vendors who gain popularity for their mastery of specific guisados, grilled meats or moles that are sold by the kilo with tacos sold as a way to taste the product.
‘I want to have rice and a guisado, I want to have mole verde with rice, and, yes, I will probably eat a tortilla as well,’ she says. ‘We’re very big fans of double carbs. But I probably won’t even put the mole in the tortilla. I’ll just roll the tortilla and use it like a naan.’ Vitamina T is both a way for Caprile to show the different formats these dishes can be served and to test to see how far she can get the British public to venture from tacos.
The taco chokehold
Public demand for tacos is a major hurdle for Mexican chefs who want to share their cuisine. When Michelle Salazar and Sam Napier of Sonora Taquería started in 2019 as Pollo Feliz, becoming a taquería was far from their mind.
‘We were actually a grilled chicken business when we started,’ says Salazar. ‘We initially said, ‘‘okay, we’re going to focus on the grilled chicken, focus on Mexican food with a different approach. We even jokingly said we want to be the place that doesn’t do tacos, because we saw that everybody else was doing tacos, and we knew that there was so much more.’’’
Eventually, demand for tacos and the strain of the global pandemic pressured Pollo Feliz to rebrand as Sonora Taquería. But, while it wasn’t the original plan, Sonora Taquería was still able to push the public’s understanding of Mexico’s culinary regionality in their decision to forgo corn tortillas and serve their tacos in flour tortillas typical of the northern Mexican state of Sonora, where Salazar is from. The pivot to tacos saw epic queues for the market stand and eventually a successful crowdfunding campaign for a larger shop that now operates in Stoke Newington.
Feeling fresh
They’re great for business, but could London’s taco takeover risk painting Mexican food as one-note? Lack of menu diversity could once be blamed on a lack of access to fresh or quality Mexican ingredients in the UK, but now you can find masa harina (dried nixtamalized corn flour) for making homemade tortillas, as well as dried ancho chillies for moles and salsa verde bases for guisados in many retail grocers.
Restaurant supplier Masafina aims to give chefs access to quality Mexican ingredients to help push the cuisine further in the UK. ‘Bad quality ingredients are so uninspiring,’ says Masafina co-founder, Andrea Montes Renaud. ‘And really, we want to inspire chefs to be adventurous with the new stuff we’re bringing and with things they’ve never heard of or tried before.’
The company works directly with farmers in Mexico and the UK to import and grow Mexican ingredients like dried chilies, heritage corn, annatto seeds and tomatillos. They also nixtamalize corn for fresh masa and make corn and flour tortillas in their Park Royal warehouse.
‘For the Mexican chefs, it’s not new, but it’s better quality than what they could get before, so that’s brilliant,’ says Masafina co-founder, Laura Copp. ‘And for British chefs, they’ve never seen it before, so they’re super excited.’
Andrea’s mother, who is a chef in Mexico, taught Andrea and Laura how to cook traditional Mexican dishes via video call during the Covid-19 lockdown. Frustration about ingredient access beyond La Costeña tins – a brand Laura describes as ‘Mexican Heinz’ – drove the pair to quit their jobs and take a five-month research trip to Mexico to formulate their business plan and find partners. Now, the venture is supplying tortillas, freshly-nixtamalized masa, salsas, spices and even fresh UK-grown tomatillos to restaurants in London like Sonora.
Next level
Mexican chefs are ready to represent their cuisine in London beyond the taco, but the consumer needs to catch up. Still – that doesn’t stop them from trying to push the public with their menu specials.
In Peckham, you’ll find Guacamoles: a stall in Rye Lane market offering Sunday soups like pozole and menudo with spicy-sour broths that make them a favourite cure for hangovers. Bad Manners serves specials like mole de olla in addition to tacos and burritos out of a tucked-away shed in Hackney Church gardens, and at beloved takeaway Bake Street in Stoke Newington, where taco specials are often part of the weekend brunch menu, pan dulces (sweet breads) like conchas have been added to the weekend bake line-up.
It’s just about explaining the cuisine better
Sonora’s own taco success has given them the opportunity to think about expanding their offerings for one-off events like a recent collaboration with pop-up chefs Ariel McQueen and Paxti Andres Schmid, where they served tacos de canasta: tacos steamed together in a basket rather than made à la carte. Sonora’s most recent event on August 24 featured Sonoran style hotdogs, a street food that is almost as prolific as tacos in the region.
Mexico’s street food scene is endlessly craveable but, for now, the reigion’s other dining formats remain relatively unseen in London. ‘I would love to have Cenadurías,’ says Salazar. ‘They’re a late-night diner where you have all the typical flautas [deep-fried rolled tacos], sopes [small pan-fried corn cakes filled with beans, meat and often topped with guacamole and salsa], tostadas, fried tacos and menudo [tripe and corn soup with a red chilli base], everything. I would love that. I think it’s just about explaining the cuisine better.’
Karla’s dream restaurant offering would be ‘comida corrida’: a low-cost set menu, often served at ‘fondas’, small casual restaurants that serve home-style cooking, typically enjoyed by workers on their lunch break in a menu style similar to the food Karla shares at her supper clubs.
‘I think there has been a massive flux of people going to Mexico in the last couple of years and it’s started to open up the knowledge and perception of the food,’ says Salazar. ‘I’ve started to notice a bit more interest in regionality.’ That said, there’s a reason the taco still has Londoners in a chokehold: it’s very hard to get bored of something so delicious.
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