In honor of the restaurant’s 25th anniversary (and while the Mexico City original is closed for repairs), Pujol is coming to L.A. for a 10-day tasting menu stint inside Damian in the Arts District.
As first reported in Forbes, between April 22 and 30, chef-owner Enrique Olvera plans to bring back classics from the two Michelin star restaurant’s early days, including a potential ravioli-style avocado with shrimp tartar and a coconut squash blossom soup.
Each night will offer two 90-minute tasting menus—one starting around 5:50pm and another at 8:30pm—as first reported in the Los Angeles Times. A portion of the pop-up’s proceeds will benefit local nonprofit No Us Without You, which provides assistance to undocumented workers in the L.A. restaurant industry. A separate beverage pairing featuring agave spirits and Mexican beer and wine will also be available. Reservations for the Pujol pop-up will go live on Friday, March 21 at noon Pacific time, on Damian’s Resy page.
Per the Times, the April pop-up will also include a separate à la carte concept, Molino el Pujol, that will take over Ditroit Taqueria, Damian’s more casual daytime counterpart. The more formal six-course experience, for which pricing has yet to be determined, will definitely offer Pujol’s famous mole madre. The dish uses an approximately decade-old mother sauce that Olvera has continuously added to in the style of a live sourdough starter or the long-running vat of Cambodian pork and beef-based soup at Long Beach’s Phnom Penh Noodle Shack.
Though some of the Pujol team will be in the kitchen, the regular staff at Damian will be the main ones in charge of reviving and tweaking Pujol’s greatest hits. The kitchen is led by chef de cuisine Jesus “Chuy” Cervantes, who the James Beard Foundation recently named as a semifinalist for the nationwide Emerging Chef award.
Compared to when Pujol first opened in 2000, Olvera told the Times that the restaurant has broadened its ingredient sourcing from strictly local, traditional Mexican ingredients. Conversely, the early Pujol menu offers more experimental interpretations of fine dining but over time has become more “classically minded.”