The Migrant Chef by Laura Tillman

Author:Laura Tillman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2023-04-17T00:00:00+00:00

Lalo came back to Mexico largely unaware of the influences that preceded him. As his profile began to rise, he wasn’t sure where his story fit into the larger narrative the media was building about Mexican fine dining, and he didn’t know which details to amplify.

As Máximo approached its one-year anniversary, Alonso Ruvalcaba wrote a review in Letras Libres, a monthly literary magazine. He challenged the terms that dominated critical discussion of the restaurant’s food, which, due to its emphasis on local and seasonal products, was often characterized as “simple” and “unpretentious.” Ruvalcaba wanted the public to take a deeper look. Seasonal and local ingredients are to be expected in fine dining today, he wrote, and no, those ingredients don’t determine the quality of the food—that’s up to the chef who chooses how to prepare them. And while the food at Máximo may have given the impression of simplicity, when one plate is compared to another an artist of great range is revealed. Take, he suggested, the riotously colorful lobster aguachile, and place it alongside the restrained autumnal palate of roasted chicken and chanterelles. “It’s luxurious,” wrote Ruvalcaba. “And not just the ingredients that are chosen, but in how they are prepared. Fat, unctuousness, a sensation of fullness on the palate, that’s luxury. (It’s not luxury because they flew over the tuna from Tokyo, or because the utensils are made of gold, but really, does anyone still think that that’s luxury?) In Mexico City today, there are few dishes as luxurious as the fried egg with sweetbreads at Máximo. It almost makes you feel guilty to eat something like that during these difficult times.”

Those early reviews focused on seasonality and simplicity because that was the primary story Lalo told—and he told it with conviction. To him, the ethic of farm-to-table food was rooted in a lifetime of experiences. It was in Mexico that he first tasted a criollo apple (what in the U.S. would be referred to as heirloom)—“the little ugly ones,” apples that had defied generations of industrialization intent on mass-producing pretty, hearty varieties capable of traveling long distances unblemished so that they could be displayed in the aisles of a faraway supermarket.

During their years in the fields, Lalo and his family had been handed some of the produce they picked to take home at the end of each day. For the Garcías, that could add up to eight pints of berries, four kilos of apples, a flat of cucumbers. Even as a child, Lalo picked up on the differences in quality. Some of the cucumbers were plenty big, but they tasted like water. Others were small, their flesh snappy and sweet. The back of their Ford F-150 “was always full of buckets of apples, buckets of whatever we would pick.” Sometimes, they’d meet up with other families and trade—cucumbers for tomatoes, raspberries for blackberries.

When Lalo began working at Pujol, he paid close attention to where they sourced their ingredients. This was the best restaurant in Mexico, so where

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.