On the counter of the Eladio’s fish market there is a tuna weighing about thirty kilos. In a few seconds, Alán Villeda cuts off the head and one side, extracts a reddish slice, divides it into thick pieces, adds Japanese sauce, chives and fish roe. He brings the plate to me with a pair of chopsticks. It is a perfect sashimi. The tuna is meaty, nothing is left over or missing; it looks like a Japanese sashimi, but it is unique.
Alán, chef and owner of Cabo San Juan (next to his Eladio’s fish market) explains why seafood here tastes different: “I started with a lot of desire and little money. When we opened there were several establishments dedicated to the same thing, and I needed to do something that stood out.” He uses Mexican and Asian ingredients equally, combines them with fish, shrimp and oysters, and creates unique dishes.
Japanese or Chinese sauces are not exceptional in these aisles, because the San Juan Market is located in Chinatown, in the Historic Center of Mexico City. The distinctive feature of Alán’s recipes is the combination of the flavors he grew up with and those he has learned throughout his life, which is short because he is only a young man of 28 years old.
Originally from Mexico City, Alán and his family have a small fiefdom in this market. His grandfather Eladio was the owner of a fish market and several stores in the market. Don Eladio taught his children the trade, Guillermo among them and Alán’s father. The smell of the sea always surrounded him.
“We had oysters for breakfast, sometimes we ate lobster, at school I once told that and the teacher told me not to lie. That food was for rich people. They called my mother who explained to them that this was the family business.” Alán was an impatient young man, he wanted to write his story and had friction with his father. He says without shame that, “I was arrested for being with the wrong people, they took me to jail.”
He was detained for a few days, but the experience shook him and reconnected him with fishmongers and gastronomy. “I remember when I was 10, 11 years old, my mother would take us to La Merced for Christmas dinner. I saw her buy tomatoes, onions, garlic, spices, chili pastilla, guajillo… We would arrive, put everything on the table and go out to play. Suddenly everything I had bought was transformed into apple salad, spaghetti, marinated pork loin, cod and romeritos. And I thought about how she had done it.”
Curiosity brought him closer to the kitchen. Alan’s mother was his first teacher, she taught him her recipes and those of yesteryear, those of his grandmother who was a traditional cook; his father also cooked, he made ceviche as a strategy to better sell his products. “I gave customers a sample so they could see how good their fish was,” says Alán.
That little taste has become part of the Cabo San Juan menu and it is a very peculiar ceviche. The white fish is seasoned with lemon, oil and white vinegar, combined with red onion, tomato, avocado, bay leaves and cilantro, the result is a “ceviche” very close to a pickled fish.
The sea is immense, as are its products and the way in which a fish can be prepared, seasoned with oysters —from adding a few drops of Huichol sauce, salt and a little lemon, to adding rice vinegar and shallots— or making a tuna tostada. Alán says honestly that the key is to “prepare what I like to eat, TNT is a tostada that I made for myself one day, while I was serving; a customer saw me and told me he wanted one like that and stayed.”
Alan spreads a toast with Japanese mayonnaise and roasted chili paste, puts on cubed tuna (toro, shitoro and akami) marinated in sweet and sour Asian sauces and tobiko (flying fish roe), then takes a blowtorch with which he lightly seals the tuna, and finishes the toast with chives.
According to Alán, “I was craving something and I didn’t want to make the typical toast that everyone makes with tuna and soy. And I put TNT on it because tobiko crackles when you blow it with the blowtorch.” The TNT is explosive and exquisite, you have to order it if you go to Cabo San Juan.
These nods to Japanese gastronomy are influenced by a trip that changed Alán’s life. “I saw a documentary called Jiro Dreams of Sushi and I fell in love, I told a cousin who worked at an airline and he got the flights. I was an 18-year-old kid and it was my first trip outside the country. My coolest memory was eating nigiri at eight in the morning, it blew my mind.”
He combined the knowledge of his grandmother, his mother, his father, what he tried here and there, what he likes, and created his own way of cooking, far from the common denominator, which has made him very famous. “I wanted to do something different, that’s why the restaurant is called Cabo, in Cabos the currents change.”
This chef achieved his goal of standing out. Now people wait in line for more than an hour at the market door to wait their turn, the restaurant team, led by Diego, Alan’s older brother, juggles to accommodate people. This place is for eating delicious food and leaving satisfied; it is a place to be empathetic with the other diners in line, leaving space once you have finished so that everyone has the opportunity to try Alan’s cooking.
Source: elpais
