CHEFS OF THE KAWARTHAS
By Karen Irvine Editor, ATOTK
MARTIN CARBAJAL
Martin Carbajal is the owner of La Mesita Restaurant in the Café District in Peterborough.
I know Martin fairly well, as he is one of the stops on our walking food tours. He is always very entertaining, making the guests laugh with his funny stories. When he was 12, in Mexico City he was hanging with the wrong crowd, so his mother put him to work selling tacos. ‘I’m still grounded today because of that’, says Martin. When he was 18, the family had a taco stand. It went so well that they opened a restaurant. ‘We started out living at my Grandma’s because we couldn’t afford our own house. 25 years later, all of my family have their own houses’, says Martin. His mother was a perfectionist. Martin says, ‘She had me make rice every single day. She would say it was too wet, too dry, too crunchy, didn’t have enough salt. There was always something. When I finally did it properly, I expected to get a pat on the back or good job or something. All she said was that it’s what you are supposed to do. It was hard, but it taught me that good actions are like a balloon and bad actions are like a needle and will break everything else. You are only as good as your last meal. (he laughs) If your last meal was good, you are perfect.’ Martin was 28 when left Mexico City. He came to Canada, found a Mexican restaurant and went to work. He says, ‘When I came to Canada the first time, I was only here for 2 months. The restaurant I worked at was in Kensington Market called El Trompo.’ He went back to Mexico and got a job working on a cruise ship in Alaska. He says, ‘The visa process was very arduous. In Mexico there are a lot of businesses Page 8
that scam you – asking for money but there is no job.’ So although it may have been a scam, he decided to try, in case it was legitimate. They told him he had to pay for his American visa and there would be an English exam and a physical. He passed all the criteria and flew to Alaska, where he was an assistant to the steward – the helper to the helper to the helper of the steward – and spent 4 years on the ship. By working hard, he had 4 promotions in his first nine months, a
