“He refers to it as “Mi tierra” – my land, a region from which he brings glass jugs of mezcal leaned against unfamiliar shapes and colors of piles of papayas and bananas. All around are low, rickety tables and a handful of benches on the sidewalk, leading into a narrow, long kitchen made of volcanic stone and concrete. There is neither a sign nor a dining room in this opened space in the neighborhood of La Roma, in the tony city of Mexico City. It is called de Maíz Expendio, and it first opened its doors in April 2018.”
The food in the Caribbean was cooked in a Mughlai style, with tomatoes, chiles, garlic, and onions, and served in a sweet-sour sauce with bananas. The sauce was thick and red, made with nutty mole sauce and costeño chile, and melted cheese curds, including salty queso de mole, were added to the bubbling clay cazuelas. The kitchen resembled a rural concert, with the food being prepared and cooked collectively.
Tornés, the gentle giant with long messy black hair and melancholic huge eyes, spends hours hunched over his black stone metate, grinding nixtamalized corn into fragrant masa to shape into tortillas, sold on site by Kilo. He uses his maternal surname and has never had a relationship with his father. This is his first year in the restaurant’s existence, and he is like a saint.
In the city center, where the majority of tortillas are produced using the industrial corn flour Maseca, traditional corn dough made from heirloom corn was still considered a high-end commodity. At that moment, only a handful of individuals in the central neighborhoods were offering it for sale.
He says, “How much do you value things: question the? It is simple.” He says, “I am convinced that the whole problem in Mexico’s food system comes from our inability to value things as much as they do.”
Expendio, a restaurant known for its innovative cuisine, always strives to provide a unique dining experience. Whether you prefer a leisurely meal or a quick bite, Expendio caters to your individual preferences. The restaurant offers a perfect balance of relaxed and sacred ambience, creating a joyful and reverent atmosphere.
Even people who knew about the rich diversity of regional Mexican cuisines were unfamiliar with the flavors coming out of Tornés’ kitchen. Tornés said that he once made a banana-stuffed enchilada bathed in a pale mole made with white cacao and pine nuts, as well as a briny shrimp mole cooked in coconut oil and thin strips of green poblano chile (rajas were used).
Tornés shared a story about his homeland, which was equally unfamiliar. Presently, Ayutla, located just inland from the Pacific coast, is renowned as the home of Guerrero’s infamous autodefensas – a group of community police forces that arose in 2012 amidst increasing drug violence. While initially established to combat corruption and exploitation, numerous others have also fallen victim to these very systems. Nevertheless, a few autodefensas have managed to restore a semblance of order within their communities.
Hills green, intertwined in the communities of Mixteco indigenous people who cultivate them; between 1815 and 1565, Spanish trading ships that crossed the Pacific between Acapulco and Manila brought dozens of varieties of mangoes and bananas from Asia; he talked about the Afro-Mexican communities along the coast who fish. Over the course of many conversations and meals, we have become friends and talked about the remarkable diversity of Ayutla. Tornés drew his guests into long, meandering conversations at the Expendio.
One restaurant that has successfully translated the chaos and spontaneity of a country kitchen to the ordered city is Pujol, opened by Enrique Olvera in the capital since 2000. This restaurant pays homage to and romanticizes the cooking of rural Mexico, serving legendary dishes such as aged mole on stark white haute cuisine flatware.
Tornés says he learned a lot about cooking as a child, following his grandmother around like a shadow. He watched her nixtamalize corn over an open flame, as she pressed tortillas into masa with her hardened hands. He observed her rolling off the thick paste into grains, as her wrists softened and the grains ground into a fluid. He also saw her sell dulce pan at the local market, which she made at a bakery.
Tornés endeared himself to taqueros in order to acquire knowledge about their process, imitating his mother’s sociable personality — Ángeles is acquainted with almost everyone in Ayutla, almost literally — they would dine at taco stands scattered throughout Mexico City where, during the evenings, he would implore to prepare breakfast for Ángeles, who never particularly enjoyed cooking herself. In Ayutla, his passion for cooking was stigmatized; in the city, his peers harassed him for his slow coastal accent. Tornés felt isolated in both places, growing up between Ayutla and Mexico City, where his mother, Ángeles, was employed for 25 years.
He states, “My initial educational institution was the streets of Mexico City. That’s where I acquired an appreciation for mainstream culture.”
Miguel Mercado, a culinary school student, lived on 100 pesos per day for five years as a student until he moved to Puebla to attend culinary school. However, he didn’t start to appreciate the value of Ayutla’s culture until he began cooking with inexpensive ingredients from the surrounding villages every weekend instead of spending money in town or going biking.
He states, “I consistently felt more at ease in rustic communities, and venturing out on my bicycle, I recognized the immense satisfaction it brought to be in those areas, and that’s when I commenced to recover the rustic component of my identity.” “Individuals would inquire about my origin and I would respond Mexico City. However, as time passed, I began to develop a sense of pride in declaring that my origins and knowledge stemmed from Guerrero.”
In 2012, he relocated to Mexico City and then to Puebla, where Siva de Metate imports ingredients cultivated around Ayutla. First to Puebla and then to Mexico City, he established a company called Siva de Metate with his mother. The term “Siva de Metate” is Mixteco for chocolate ground on a metate and has now become an integral part of his livelihood and identity.
In the dry season, pomelo is harvested from the mangrove lagoon’s forests — with citric as its flavor and gray ash as its color — along with burnt salt or “quemado sal” from the coastal shallow lagoon near Chautengo; on the steep hillsides of La Curtina, there are wild agave plants that grow pineapple-like fruits with spiky skin, which are sweet; after the murder of his family member in 2003, Aurelia Morales García struggled to preserve the ancestral cultivated varieties of red-seeded long beans and purple corn on their family’s plot; in Tepuente, the Morales family also sold young garlic, known for its piquant taste, as well as delicate chives, tiny spring onions called “tikuchi,” and fresh-cut grass of the color of Santa Hoja sheaves at the Metate de Siva.
Also its customs but also its traditions not only the components of his homeland but also its customs where Tornés could display not only the components of his homeland but also its customs that had opened up next to his restaurant a narrow strip of a area that had opened up next to his restaurant with the concept of opening a restaurant in a narrow strip of a area that had opened up next to his restaurant approached Tornés with the concept of opening a restaurant in a narrow strip of a area that had opened up next to his restaurant By 2018, Paulino Martínez Acra, one of the owners of El Parnita, and the trendy, family-owned La Roma taquería El Parnita Mexico City’s greatest mezcalería, Bosforo, Elena Reygadas’ Italianate Rosetta, and the old-school institution Nicos, it had become a provider for restaurants such as the old-school institution Nicos, Elena Reygadas’ Italianate Rosetta, Mexico City’s greatest mezcalería, Bosforo, and the trendy, family-owned La Roma taquería El Parnita Within a year, it had become a provider for restaurants such as the old-school institution Nicos, Elena Reygadas’ Italianate Rosetta, Mexico City’s greatest mezcalería, Bosforo, and the trendy, family-owned La Roma ta
He might create his favorite dish with a local variety of chiles called mirasol; he makes his favorite dish with dried guajillo chiles; he serves his favorite dish, which is steamed sweet bananas with mole sauce, in a pot; he might create his favorite dish with a local variety of chiles called mirasol; he makes his favorite dish with salsa, which is made from semi-domesticated chiles and pockmarked, pale heirloom tomatoes, and homemade mayo that is sharper and smaller than thumbtacks; he coats their fish from the coast with a thick slurry of salsa made from Puebla-grown serrano chiles and bright red tomatoes, and jarred mayonnaise; Tornés transforms his childhood recipes with a puritanical zeal for regional ingredients.
He says, “We are not doing anything innovative.” It’s about making food from the region, respecting the ingredients from the region. For me, it’s more about cooking rural and reading historical texts about food than being obsessed with “authenticity.” The result at Expendio was a result of this.
Ana Gonzalez, who was raised and born in the southern district of Mexico City, took over as the lead cook at Expendio in April. Prior to joining the kitchen, she started introducing her own dishes to the menu after a few months of cooking. She describes her signature dish as a variation of a taco, where the filling consists of a deep-fried and folded tortilla filled with nixtamalized corn, which is valued as an ingredient on its own. She piles whole kernels of corn extravagantly on top, turning it into a taco that she calls “aire de taco.”
“We aim to eradicate that negative perception,” expresses Gonzalez. Both Tornés and Gonzalez desire to witness a more equitable distribution of customers between locals and tourists. Currently, it exceeds 10,000 kilograms, as mentioned by Tornés; during its initial operation, Expendio consumed approximately 400 kilograms of nixtamalized corn on a monthly basis. Following its establishment, Expendio has experienced reduced disorder (largely due to Gonzalez’s impact) and increased popularity, especially among international visitors.
According to Tornés, “In the early 20th century, when people preferred to eat French food, it was considered private and unconventional to consume tortillas. It’s like we are still living in those times.”
Equally vital are these concepts; they are equally unoriginal compared to Tornés’ culinary skills. To wield when suitable, but as a intricate cultural legacy deserving of examination and admiration, not as simplified patriotic representations, nor as inexpensive or outdated, to perceive native food traditions, the reeducation (to employ a phrase preferred by Guerrero’s autodefensas) of city dwellers necessitates modifications at both extremes of Mexico’s distribution system: a decrease in the quantity of exploitative intermediaries between farmers and consumers, he asserts, which poses a challenge.