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Mod Mex: The New Face of Mexican Food—billed as a “face-off” among four prominent chefs, hosted by Frontera Grill at Kendall College last Saturday—took on the question of what modern Mexican cuisine is. While it didn’t promise to answer that question, it did say that Chicago chefs Rick Bayless (Frontera, etc) and Carlos Gaytan (Mexique), New York’s Alex Stupak (Empellon), and Mexico City’s Jorge Vallejo (Quintonil) would defend their respective visions of Mexican cooking. I expected a discussion among all the chefs, but instead they took turns talking briefly about their restaurants and how they saw Mexican food before demonstrating a dish (or a few). But though the program wasn’t the knock-down, drag-out fight suggested by words like “face-off,” each chef had a slightly different idea of what defined Mexican cooking.
- Julia Thiel
- Carlos Gaytan’s lamb belly huarache with pickled onions and salsa verde
After the chefs finished their presentations, representatives from Wahaka Distillery talked about mezcal and demonstrated how to make a variation on the classic Corpse Reviver (recipe below), then the audience moved to another room to taste the food that the chefs had demonstrated how to make, along with the Corpse Reviver and wines of Mexico (I didn’t try the latter, but the former was excellent, and is very simple to make).
