Rick Bayless remembers the first time Frontera Grill got a delivery of Masienda’s heirloom corn masa as one of the most “dramatic moments in the restaurant.” As soon as his chefs started to make tortillas, the smell began to waft around the kitchen of Bayless’ flagship restaurant in Chicago’s River North.
“It didn’t take more than 15 minutes for all the Mexican-born staff to drift over to the comal,” Bayless says. “They were saying, ‘Oh my, this is the flavor of my childhood.'”
That was exactly the kind of reaction Jorge Gaviria, the founder and CEO of Masienda, was hoping for. He had created the Los Angeles-based company in 2014 after becoming interested in sustainable agriculture while working at Dan Barber’s Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a restaurant, farm and educational center in New York’s Hudson Valley. He focused in on corn, specifically heirloom varieties still available in Mexico.
“In Mexico there are about 3 million subsistence farmers producing heirloom corn,” says Gaviria. “They are protecting the biodiversity of corn, but they can’t compete with the prices of subsidized commodity corn from the U.S.” (That number is backed up by the nonprofit International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.)
Gaviria claims that after NAFTA was passed in 1994, Mexico was flooded with cheap corn from the United States. As a result, many corn farmers in Mexico stopped selling their excess corn in markets because they couldn’t compete with the low prices. (A report by the Council on Foreign Relations notes that NAFTA put “almost two million small-scale Mexican farmers out of work.”)
Gaviria wanted to figure out a way to “upgrade the food chain” and sell the unsold heirloom corn. Not only would it help the small farmers make money, but it also would showcase how flavorful heirloom corn can be. “It’s not about how much can I get per acre, but how much flavor,” says Gaviria. “Why not let the flavor guide the application?”
Gaviria started by reaching out to chefs like Enrique Olvera, the acclaimed Mexico City chef who had just opened up Cosme in New York City, and Bayless, chef and co-owner of several Mexican restaurants in Chicago, including Tortas Frontera, Lena Brava and Topolobampo.
According to Bayless, Chicago already had some of the best corn tortillas in the United States, thanks to tortillerias like El Popocatepetl and El Milagro. “It’s really hard to find fresh ground masa in the United States that’s not made from masa harina,” says Bayless, referring to the masa that has been dried and turned into flour.
But for some reason, most of the tortillerias in Chicago practiced the more traditional time-consuming process of buying dried corn, boiling it with slaked lime (to make it softer and more nutritious) and then grinding it on a stone mill made from lava rock. He says that other kinds of stones or metal create a lot of heat, which can affect the masa. “But the temperature of the lava rock doesn’t get that hot,” says Bayless. “Walk into one of these tortillerias, and you’ll still find a guy in the corner chiseling stone.”
The only catch was that the companies were using the only corn available to them: dent corn produced in Illinois. “You have to admit (the tortillas made from dent corn) are delicious,” says Bayless, noting that El Popocatepetl also makes sure its corn is non-GMO. “But it’s very bland compared to the heirloom corn from Mexico.”
Bayless had been trying to devise a way to get heirloom corn from Mexico for 10 to 15 years. “We couldn’t figure out how to make it work,” says Bayless. “We talked to farmers in Mexico, but then we’d have to get a truck to drive all the way to Chicago. We needed so much, but we didn’t know how to store it all.”
When Gaviria created Masienda, Bayless was so excited that he became an investor in the company, but it initially didn’t make much sense at first to use the corn at his restaurants.
“(Jorge) was mostly selling small amounts of corn to restaurants who were boiling the corn in the restaurant,” Bayless says. “We didn’t have the room. It was more than we could take on.” His restaurants at the time were going through more than 400 pounds of masa a day, and he didn’t have space in any of the locations for a machine that big.
Plus, Bayless had spent the past 32 years getting masa from El Popocatepetl, which first opened in Pilsen back in 1954. (The company now has a second factory in the Archer Heights neighborhood, which produces the masa for Bayless’ restaurants.) He wanted that relationship to continue, so he reached out to El Popocatepetl to see if the tortilleria would take the Masienda corn and produce the masa for his restaurants. El Popocatepetl was happy to oblige.
Until recently, El Popocatepetl only sold the Masienda corn to Bayless’ restaurants, but that’s slowly starting to change. Other restaurants around Chicago are now getting access.
Julian Rodriguez, the operations manager for El Popocatepetl, says the masa made from Masienda corn still only makes up a niche market of the business, but that he’s noticed a growing number of restaurants starting to use it. Besides all of Bayless’ restaurants, Rodriguez points to 5 Rabanitos, Barrio and Dos Urban Cantina.
Brian Enyart, chef and co-owner of Dos Urban Cantina, says that while the heirloom masa costs more, it’s still not that much compared with how much he spends on other ingredients. Plus, the flavor is genuinely better. “I know that saying it tastes more like corn doesn’t make sense, but it really does,” says Enyart. “It’s subtle. You might not notice the difference at first, but you can create this magical experience that you can’t quite put your finger on.”
Katsuji Tanabe, the chef at Barrio, says the difference in flavor of a tortilla made from dent corn to one made from heirloom corn, is like the difference between “eating Wonder Bread and then going to a local bakery.”
But that’s not the only advantage. He also thinks the texture of the tortillas made from heirloom corn is just as important. “It’s stretchy and glossy,” says Tanabe. “The tortillas are so smooth.”
While everyone I talked to raved about the flavor, they also recognized how important it was to support local farmers.
“Clearly we are motivated by flavor, but I also am motivated by social justice,” says Bayless. “When NAFTA went in, we pretty much wrecked the markets for heirloom corn in Mexico. Most of the people stopped growing it, except for local consumption, because the U.S. flooded (Mexico) with subsidized corn. Mexico is the land of corn, with hundreds of varieties that we don’t want to lose.”
“Anything we can do to stay away from a monoculture is in everybody’s best interest,” says Enyart.
Tanabe believes that restaurants like his need to step up for farmers. “If you’re not making the right choices … by promoting something that’s good for someone else, you’re failing as a restaurateur,” says Tanabe. “I think it’s the right way. We have found a way to respect the corn and culture of Mexico in a beautiful way.”
Currently, El Popocatepetl isn’t producing any tortillas with the heirloom corn that consumers could buy at grocery stores, but if you’re interested in making your own tortillas, you can buy the Masienda masa at El Popocatepetl’s 47th Street location (4246 W. 47th St.).
nkindelsperger@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @nickdk
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