From a seat at Xiquita’s new sleek bar, guests have a clear view of Ana Cristina, who’s in charge of making hundreds of corn tortillas and masa dough for the Mexican restaurant.
It sets the perfect scene for the restaurant, which chef Erasmo Casiano and business partners Diego Coconati and Michelle Nguyen, will open on Friday at 500 E. 19th Ave. in Denver.
“We want to open up expectations of what Mexican food can be,” Casiano said during a preview of the restaurant. “So a lot of the food we’re presenting is very symbiotic crops that grow well together. It’s like Mother Nature saying, ‘Eat this; take this; this will sustain your body.’”
Related: Why an ancient way of grinding corn is trending on Mexican restaurant menus
The crops are squash, corn and beans, which Native American tribes called the three sisters “because they nurture each other like family when planted together,” according to the USDA.
“The amount of time, effort and care it takes to create one of these dishes and reproduce it for a dining room full of people is tough, and we learned quickly that we need to find a flow for it,” Casiano said. “Especially when you think about all these street carts in Mexico busting fresh tortillas with no complaints, it’s superhuman.”
Still, Casiano, Coconati and Nguyen appear to have found their flow when it comes to restaurants. The trio owns Lucina Eatery & Bar, a Latin American, Caribbean and coastal Spanish restaurant that opened in Park Hill in 2022, and Create Kitchen & Bar, which hosts European-inspired cooking classes in Aurora’s Stanley Marketplace.
Earlier this year, Casiano and Coconati, Lucina’s head chef, were both 2024 James Beard Award semifinalists for Best Chef in the Mountain region. In April, Bon Appétit named Xiquita one of the seven most anticipated restaurant openings nationwide.
While Casiano said “there’s a pressure to live up to that hype,” he feels more pressure to pay respect to the history, tradition and culture of the Indigenous ingredients on Xiquita’s menu.
Some of Xiquita’s dishes have a modern presentation but the preparation sticks to the tried and true ways of cooking with a lot of open fire, simmering, roasting and blackening with ash and charcoal. Xiquita has a whole section dedicated to masa,which Casiano hopes will spark a conversation among customers. There are nixtamalized and freshly hand-pressed corn tortillas topped with crispy duck carnitas or al-pastor-style blackened bass; a sope stacked with slow-roasted beef tongue that melts in your mouth; a tamale stuffed with elote; and a tetela (masa stuffed with squash, beans and corn in the shape of a triangle).
“We’ve taken a lot of our food for granted, just in general,” Casiano said. “Everything is pre-packed. You know, you get a pre-packaged salad with the dressing and everything. We lose sense of where our food is coming from, which is the earth. We all need to appreciate and add more value to our foods, and that starts with the humble tortilla for me.”
Nixtamalization is a Mesoamerican technique in which dried corn kernels are soaked and cooked in an alkaline solution. This breaks down the outer shell of the kernel, releasing more nutrients from the corn and making it more digestible. After it’s been washed and rests overnight, the corn is ground up in a “molino,” or a mill, using lava rock stones. Then it’s made into masa flour, before the dough is used for tortillas, tamales, tetelas, sopes, etc. Casiano is one of three chefs planning to showcase the ancient tradition on high-end menus.
“Nixtamalization releases all the nutrients of the corn that your body needs to survive, and the beauty in this 18-plus hour process is something that shouldn’t be taken for granted, especially with the mass production side of things,” Casiano said.
Casiano recruited Rene Gonzalez Mendez as Xiquita’s executive chef. Mendez and his wife, Hazel, owned Pato’s Tacos on East Colfax Avenue, and joined Lucina after Pato’s closed last summer. “After I tried his frijoles charros, I was thoroughly impressed,” Casiano said.
Gonzalez Mendez created the restaurant’s Hoja Santa starter. Hoja Santa is an Indigenous Mexican pepper leaf, which he stuffs with cheese and salsa macha mushrooms on top of a tostada. There’s also a Caldito de Chilpachole, a seafood soup, which originates from his hometown of Veracruz, Mexico. Gonzales Mendez features his own line of Pinche Salsa Macha throughout the menu and plans to eventually sell it at the restaurant.
Lucina chef Coconati came up with the Sikil Pak starter after a trip to Mexico. It’s typically a Mayan-inspired dip made with beets and goat cheese, which they made into a tostada. The beets are woodfired over tamale leaves and cured with lime to take it to an elevated Mexican level. “Rene welcomed Diego to the brotherhood after that,” Casiano joked.
Drinks are tequila-centric with Chamoy-flavored margaritas, tequila-based blueberry froze, melon tequila daiquiris, and tomatillo margaritas. For dessert, there’s frozen hot chocolate ice cream in the mold of corn on the cob.
After friends and family night this week, Casiano and Gonzalez Mendez questioned what they got themselves into. “At the end of the night, I ended up saying out loud that this is the hardest cuisine I’ve ever made in my life,” Casiano said.
But they “welcome the challenge, and we welcome everybody to come in and try and appreciate the pure difference in these ingredients, temperatures and flavors,” he added.
Originally Published: August 1, 2024 at 6:42 a.m.
