“Tequila is a drink of love,” says Maria Minutti standing in her kitchen. She clutches her hands tightly when the word love comes out – a gesture that expresses a powerful sincerity. “This is Mexico,” she says looking out at her living room. My wife Natalie and our friend Andrea just popped in the door to pick me up, Jesse and his partner Maggie are at the table with Maria’s husband Dustin White, both of my kids and half of the Wilkinson clan were in and out throughout the day. “People coming and going, enjoying a drink, eating, laughing. When you share tequila and cook for someone, it’s a time to show the love you have for them… I love this.”
It’s 7:30 pm and I’ve had the pleasure of cooking with and learning from Maria since noon. I have a belly full of tequila, gorditas, chicken enchiladas, salsas, shrimp gazpacho cocktail, hibiscus chipotle adobo, flan – and a huge smile on my face.
When the idea came about to profile Mestizo Taqueria in our next issue, I jumped at the opportunity. I have a deep love for cooking and Mexican food sits atop the list of my favourite things to (try) to cook. I have the tortilla presses, the stores of dried chiles, the achiote paste, scars from scalding birria consommé, and the tequila hangover stories to prove it. It’s unlike any other food scene on earth; the colours, the spices, the textures, the music that accompanies – it’s an infectious culinary culture that encourages a confidence in the kitchen I don’t often feel when cooking other kinds of food. Authentic Mexican fare has a long history of adaptation, a strong sense of tradition both pre- and post-Spanish colonial rule, and at the same time, a welcoming inclusion of experimentation and integration of other cultures.
When I walk into the kitchen to start my makeshift apprenticeship, I’m greeted by a myriad of clay dishware filled with 7 different chiles from Mexico that have been lovingly transported north by Maria’s family. There’s a bottle of tequila and Squirt!, a beloved Mexican grapefruit soda on the table, bags of jumbo shrimp in the sink thawing, chicken in the fridge, and black beans bubbling away in a clay pot atop the stove. “Welcome to your kitchen, pick an apron!” shouts Maria.
So I’ll come clean and tell you now I walked in thinking, “I know what I’m doing,” yeah? I have the YouTube browsing history to prove my Mexican food knowledge. First step, make guacamole. First, I peel the avocado “wrong” – just jitters, I tell myself. Then I ask about garlic.
“No.” Maria says bluntly. “When I go home and tell people, ‘these Canadians put garlic in their guacamole, they all say ‘What?!’” Dustin laughs from across the kitchen. “Somehow a stern ‘no’ like that with a Mexican accent makes it seem nice.”
Mestizo Taqueria has an interesting origin story that begins with Tim and Vita, owners of Sundays Ice Cream and The Launch in Owen Sound. Word begins spreading about the dinners being enjoyed by their employees who are family friends of Maria and Dustin. They begin plotting how to get an invite as neighbours. The message is relayed, and boom, “tell them to come for dinner!” is the response.
“There is no way to learn to do this except for doing it. You just have to do it… it’s a special language. There’s the social aspect of it in Mexico and South America, too. Food is the love language. Once people start talking about food, everybody speaks the same language.”
“That was three years ago and we became incredibly good friends,” says Maria. “For two years they were telling us you have to make this for The Launch. But, you know, I was busy. So any excuse, the kids, the weekends, I’m tired… And then, I went home to Mexico a year-and-a-half ago and when I came back, I was laid off. One day shortly after I was working in the garden out front – I thought I’m going to take the summer off and I’m going to enjoy it. Vita came over and [learned what happened] and said this is the perfect time – now you don’t have any excuse, please make tacos for The Launch. My husband was right there next to me and he said, ‘Yes, she will do it.’ And I said, “Listen, ok, I’m going to do it once, if it works, great, and if it doesn’t work, we’ll be good friends as always and you keep coming over for dinner.” By 5:30 that evening, they had sold out and they’ve continued to sell out every Tuesday all summer long.
On top of the taqueria, catering has become an increasingly popular side hustle for Mestizo. People began asking about work parties, birthdays, retirements, Christmas dinners, you name it. All of the additional business meant seeking some entrepreneurial help – cue the Grey County Business Enterprise Centre, which helped Maria and Dustin make sense of their growing business and how to optimize sales, and plan for the long term. “They were amazing – fantastic,” Maria says of the BEC.
“We explained to them that we are in a very specific situation because we are seasonal; even though it seems like a restaurant, we are not a full restaurant – it’s just a taco stand. They work with us to develop a business plan to develop a schedule, they walked us through it all – if we need help with finances, they’re like, ‘Hey, we’ve got somebody you can talk to,’ or ‘Let us know if you need help with x, y, z.’ They really focused on our situation and they gave us every single tool that we needed to succeed.”
“Our main issue was that we were growing too fast and we didn’t want this to be out of our control,” adds Dustin. “It’s a good problem to have, but up close it’s just the most frustrating thing you can do – we were winning and because of that, we were also losing. We kind of experimented with how we can cut costs without raising prices because, you know, everybody, every transaction that we do is $20 more than it should be. If we can keep costs down and give people good food at a fair price, I think there’s a huge market for that right now. And when you, when you do the leg work and you find the cheap suppliers and you work with local farmers, you can really keep the price stable.”
Locally, Mestizo sources a ton of Grey Bruce produce, namely garlic from Down North Garlic Company, corn and veg from Hi-Berry Farms in Southampton, honey from Donald’s Honey near Leith – the list goes on. Chiles are inherently hard to source locally so they come with family from Mexico – and Mexican white corn tortillas from Consuela, a mysterious family friend in Toronto, whom no one has seemed to have actually met, explains Maria with a laugh and a smile.
On the table sits a stack of handwritten recipes from Maria’s mother and family back home. Some are written on scraps on paper, others on the backs of phone bills – it’s the epitome of homegrown learned knowledge. As we cook throughout the afternoon, I ask repeatedly, “How much was that, a cup, cup and a half, a teaspoon?” which is met consistently with a simple, “Maybe.” In other recipes, a “measurement” is cited as a unit of measurement.
So how much is that? “About a handful, but your hand is much bigger than mine,” she replies in an encouraging, yet cryptic fashion. “There is no way to learn to do this except for doing it. You just have to do it… it’s a special language. There’s the social aspect of it in Mexico and South America too. Food is the love language. Once people start talking about food, everybody speaks the same language.”
In many ways, I leave the house that evening feeling that Mexican food, in all of its beautiful glory, is king. It doesn’t feel bound by any real rules, any set measurements, or even ingredients; where Mexican cuisine excels is in its embrace of people, its requirement of care and love for the people you’re cooking for.
Here I am, a Canadian mutt white guy who just digs eating tacos, and I’ve been invited into Maria and Dustin’s family home as a total stranger who puts garlic in guac (not anymore, Maria,
I promise). I’ve learned more in a day from rolling up my sleeves and listening to the flow of her kitchen than I could from a lifetime of reading cookbooks or watching YouTube videos.
There’s so much more to learn, to taste, and to try – and even as an expert chef, I’m sure Maria would agree. When we all collectively step back into the Mestizo line up at The Launch in May, we’ll have a better sense of the love that’s gone into the food knowing the care and joy that come from the people making it. That’s a beautiful thing. Maria and Dustin are legitimately happy to see you eat and enjoy yourself – the feeling that brings is a language everyone can understand.
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Words & photos by Nelson Phillips
