Broken Spanish Hosts Tacolandia's Night of Modern Mexican Cuisine, This Friday June 5th with DeLeon Tequila

Pictured from top left (clockwise): Chef Ray Garcia (Broken Spanish), Chef guillermo Gonzalez (Pangea), Chef Solange Muris (Manzanilla), Chef Diego Hernandez (Corazon de Tierra), Chef Wes Avila (Guerrilla Tacos)

Modern Mexican cuisine has been a hot topic this last year with the arrival of chef Enrique Olvera's Cosme in NYC, chef Javier Plascencia's Bracero, which opens in San Diego next month, and the recent announcement that chef Diego Hernandez will be opening +52 in the Fall, right here in L.A. Local chefs like Wes Avila and hosting chef Ray Garcia--along with others here in town--have begun to define a homegrown style of Modern Mexican here in Southern California, known as Alta California cuisine.


Chef Ray Garcia has seized the opportunity of having some of the best Mexican chefs in the world here in town for LA Weekly's sold-out Tacolandia (6/6), to put on a pre-Tacolandia, 6-course dinner, sponsored by DeLeon tequila, who will be pouring their tequila at the cocktail reception.


Garcia will be joined by 3 chefs from the San Pellegrino Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants: Guillermo Gonzalez (Pangea), Solange Muris (Manzanilla), and Diego Hernandez (Corazon de Tierra) and chef Wes Avila (Guerrilla Tacos) for a special Modern Mexican dinner at Broken Spanish, in the former Rivera space. Sergio Gutierrez of Monterrey's Bocanegra beer will pair up with chef Gonzalez on his course.


This dinner represents where Modern Mexican began, with pioneering restaurants Pangea (1998) and Manzanilla (2000), to the current generation of contemporary Mexican restaurants on both sides of the border, Corazon de Tierra, Broken Spanish and Guerrilla Tacos.


Tacolandia has been sold out for 7 weeks, so here's a chance to get in on the festivities, or make it a Tacolandia weekend if you've already got your golden tickets. Tickets are $107.95 each on Eventbrite for rare chance to catch this Modern Mexican line-up in Los Angeles.


Broken Spanish Hosts Tacolandia's Night of Modern Mexican Cuisine
Friday June 5 @Broken Spanish; $107.95 per person
6pm to 10pm
Tickets are available here on Eventbrite.
1050 S. Flower St.
Downtown Los Angeles

Chef Rick Bayless to Surrender the Chips and Salsa and Open a Modern Mexican Restaurant?

Chef Rick Bayless, feeling naked without the guacamole


During the Grand Cayman cookout back in January a rather giddy Rick Bayless was tight-lipped about a new concept he was working on which he called "a completely new concept that you've never seen before", as he told Eater(the original announcement was back in November of 2013), in the self-stimulating hyperbole we've come to expect from Bayless-- [there's]"virtually nothing like it in the United States." The Oklahoma native has been spending lots of time in the Modern Mexican restaurants of Mexico City and throughout the republic in the last couple of years, as opposed to the tourist friendly traditional restaurants he's favored in the past like El Bajio and El Cardenal. 


This will come as a shock to many Bayless devotees who for years have considered Baylesses' restaurants to be alta cocina (high cuisine), or Modern Mexican kitchens. This is due to the fact that few U.S. citizens have experienced Modern Mexican cuisine, including the ones who've traveled to Mexico City, preferring the mid-priced, commercial restaurants found in guide books like Contramar, Hacienda de Los Morales, or Cafe Tacuba. Bayless is exited about the advancements in Modern Mexican cuisine happening in Mexico right now, claiming that it "just emerged 5, 6, or 7 years ago"--once again, the anthropologist is way off--try about 18 years ago, Chef. Regardless, this will be the first real challenge for the most famous Chef cooking Mexican flavors in the U.S.

Sedlar, Salgado, and Ruiz Serve up Modern Mexican at Los Angeles Magazine's Social Hour on 3/19

If you haven't heard, chefs Eduardo Ruiz(Corazon y Miel) and Carlos Salgado(Taco Maria) are a pretty big deal--no, you didn't hear? Well, then be sure to pick up the March issue of Los Angeles Magazine where L.A.'s best and most trustworthy critic, Patrick Kuh, talks about the quiet revolution happening at these two restaurants. Not to mention, you can read about my first Road Trip for the travel section in which I write about one of my recent Baja adventures.

The two young, trendsetting chefs will join chef John Sedlar tomorrow night (3/19), who was the first Latino chef in the U.S. to blaze these trails over 30 years ago at St. Estephe, and then did a historic repeat by opening the only Modern Latin cuisine restaurant--Rivera--in the U.S.

This story is just beginning, about Modern Mexican in the U.S. led by Mexican-American chefs--all three grew up with the matriarchal cooking of their grandmothers, mothers, aunts, and cousins and have absorbed a lifetime of flavors, techniques, and cultural cues filtered through the practice of cooking in the best kitchens in the world.

You are invited to taste the future of Modern Mexican in the U.S. tomorrow night(3/19) at Rivera in 3 courses with Los Angeles Magazine Dine editor Lesley Barger Suter and I for only $40.00--it's a steal--exclusively for our Social Hour series. Viva la revolucion!

Modern Mexican Cuisine @ Rivera with chefs John Sedlar, Eduardo Ruiz, and Carlos Salgado
Wednesday, March 19 @ 7PM, $40 a person
Rivera, 1050 S Flower St #102, Downtown Los Angeles, call (213) 749-1460 for reservations