hen Chef Silvana Salcido Esparza opened Barrio Café with business and then-life partner Wendy Grubler on July 11, 2002, the tiny kitchen of the new restaurant flooded the same day. But Barrio Café, a restaurant that refused to follow preconceived notions of Mexican food and didn’t let a little water get in the way, went on to become a game changer in Phoenix cuisine. Howard Seftel, then a food critic for the Arizona Republic, gave the restaurant a gleaming five-star review a few months after it opened, something unheard of for any Mexican eatery at the time. He later named Salcido Esparza in a list of the “Valley’s first Golden Age of Independent Chefs,” writing that the restaurant “rede- fined Mexican food.” Looking back, it’s easy to see what he was so passionate about. Salcido Esparza was determined to blaze her own path, serving guacamole, prepared tableside, with pome- granate seeds in it. The enchiladas are topped with smoked mole, at once savory and sweet, the melty Oaxacan quesillo the cherry on top. And forget about American or cheddar cheese on this menu; that would just be lazy, Salcido Esparza says. “I took myself seriously. I wasn’t gonna cheapen who I am. People thought that Mexican food had to be $8.99. They expected chips and salsa,” Salcido Esparza says. “But that’s not the restaurant I wanted to open.” Back in 2002, Phoenicians had no shortage of Mexican fare to choose from. But other menus offered little variety, with carne asada tacos and chicken ques- adillas that seemed to be copied and pasted from one restaurant to the next. Barrio Café challenged conventional perceptions about what Mexican food could be 20 years ago, and the restaurant is still doing that today. It’s forgoing Norteño classics often found in Phoenix like meat and flour burritos for harder- to-find regional variations like the famed Yucatan cochinita pibil, a smoked sour-orange pork that falls apart as you place it onto a corn tortilla. It’s served with Yucatan pico de gallo, a side of habanero peppers that provides a kick while the bitter orange from the 12-hour slow-roasted pork lends a hint of sweetness. Ryan Kashanipour, a historian and assistant professor at the University of Arizona who teaches about Latin American food, medicine, and contemporary culinary practices, has studied the history of Mexican food. “Today, there is a broadening and deepening of the variation of Mexican food beyond Mexican-American, which is more working-class food, and a greater appreciation for the variety of food across Mexico,” Kashanipour says. He notes that Salcido Esparza elevates food from across Mexico while keeping it accessible to the community. “It’s priced pretty well and just as sophisticated as anything I’ve gotten anywhere in the U.S.,” says Kashanipour, who is originally from Texas. Salcido Esparza’s mix of classical and off-the-beaten-path training shines through in her menu. After graduating from Scottsdale Culinary Institute in the mid-1990s, she traveled to Mexico on a scholarship to learn more about the cuisine of her ancestors. But when she arrived to find a North American chef using Indigenous recipes to teach tourists, she quickly left the program, forgoing her scholarship to >> p 19 16 AUG 18TH–AUG 24TH, 2022 PHOENIX NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | NEWS | OPINION | FEEDBACK | CONTENTS | phoenixnewtimes.com
