hungrier than ever
A
ssessing a city’s food should entail physically going there; tasting the food, and listening to what the people behind the counter have to say. Usually, this happens, and visitors from around the country are finding El Paso to be
a place with rich tradition and young, detail-oriented chefs pushing it forward. “Who decides what a foodie likes? What even is a foodie?” Chef Rudy Valdes says to me outside Crave Kitchen and Bar on Cincinnati Street, one of the strongholds of El Paso’s humble culinary renaissance. “We might not fit a certain mold, but this city loves food, and you can see over the past few years how palettes are expanding and people are into new things.” Valdes, along with his partners Octavio Gomez and Nick Salgado, are very much in the business of expanding themselves. In November, they opened Independent Burger inside The Venue at Montecillo, a place where they could elaborate on the
Rudy Valdes - Crave
wildly popular burger they serve at Crave. They plan to open three new concepts this year at TIME, Gomez’s new retail mecca at Montecillo: one is a modern take on the classic cantina; one is a coffee, fried donuts and light breakfast spot; another will riff on the casual steakhouse. Valdes lovingly describes working with Gomez and Salgado as “like living inside of a brainstorm.” The local chefs I talked to had many things in common—raised by a food-loving family in El Paso, left for training and worked at food destinations such as Portland and New York City, and at some point returned to their hometown to see their vision through. Also, they are all really good at preparing food! But what really stood out was a certain restlessness they all shared. Adapt or die? When I step out to the patio at Tom’s Folk Café to see owner Ian Atkins and Chef Lawrence Acosta, they’re in the middle of going through their own menu, pitching ideas and crossing things off. Tom’s owns the pleasure of being truly one of a kind in El Paso: a socially conscious, all-organic, all-sustainable restaurant serving intricate preparations of American comfort food. But the pressure to keep the concept
Norbert Portillo - Tabla
fresh is something that weighs on both Atkins and Acosta. “We’ve got to constantly evolve,” Acosta says, presumably in order to keep patrons interested, and, I suspect, to stave off boredom. Atkins periodically thumbing through a stack of paper, and as he shifts in his seat, he says they are currently mulling over a decision to scratch burgers from the menu. Stasis seemingly becomes the enemy of these small, ambitious establishments; no one understands this better than Chef Norbert Portillo at Tabla, a place now receiving some national buzz as a mainstay in El Paso’s growing downtown. (Portillo also has plans for new ventures, including a sports pub concept that makes sense with the Chihuahuas’ inaugural season just around the corner.) Tabla’s tapas-dominated menu is well suited for the ADD age. “When I’m at a restaurant, I like to try a little bit of everything. I’ve always felt the ideal way to eat isn’t to have a big portion of one thing,” Portillo says. Tapas aren’t new, Portillo maintains. It’s the way large families have eaten together for generations, especially in El Paso. Food has always had a way of sparking conversation,
Lawrence Acosta - Tom’s Folk Café www.thecitymagazineelp.com
cementing friendships, and reinvigorating communities.
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