- Chef Alfonso Brito, of Monarca in Salt Lake City, hosted chef Oliver Seki, of Mexico, for a workshop to showcase the range of Mexican food.
- Seki, from Ensenada, Mexico, focuses on a style dubbed Japan-Baja, melding the food of Japan and Baja California.
- Seki prepared tuna tartar before a crowd at the workshop, also hosted by the Mexican Consulate.
SALT LAKE CITY — There's more to Mexican food than tacos and burritos.
"It's so vast in Mexico that when you go to Baja California, to Ensenada, it's very different cuisine. It's still Mexican cuisine, but it's different from one state to another," said Alfonso Brito, the chef at Monarca in Salt Lake City and co-owner of the high-end Mexican restaurant.
In a bid to put the variety on display and underscore some of the many food traditions in Mexico, Monarca and the Mexican Consulate of Salt Lake City hosted Oliver Seki, a chef based in Ensenada, Mexico, this week. He offered a workshop at Monarca showcasing his cuisine, which is dubbed Japan-Baja, fusing the food of Japan and the Mexican state of Baja California, where Ensenada is located.
"This activity is part of the consulate's ongoing efforts to promote the richness and diversity of Mexico's gastronomic heritage in Utah while strengthening cultural and academic ties with the local community," the consulate said in a statement. Salt Lake Community College's Center for Latin American Studies also participated in the event.
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Voces de Utah
Looking for more news from Utah's Latino community? Visit our Voces de Utah section for more stories, events and features.Seki, who has collaborated with Brito at culinary events around the world, made tuna tartar, a Japan-Baja dish consisting of bluefish tuna in a mayonnaise-based sauce. He and his assistant, Alejandro Blanco-Rosas, prepared the dish in front of about 30 people gathered at Monarca on Thursday, hand-mixing the ingredients and spices to make the mayonnaise base and blending it with the tuna. The preparation of the mayonnaise, from scratch, seemed to require the most effort.
"The process is tiring," said Seki. "But it's the most traditional way to make mayonnaise."
Brito saw Thursday's event as an opportunity to expose Salt Lake City area foodies to something new. "Our community really likes to try new things," he said.
Brito experiments with varied food traditions at Monarca, using Mexican food stylings and local food as a base but fusing it with Peruvian, Mediterranean and other influences.
"We cook eel, elk. We have tacos with caviar. ... We become really creative with all the proteins that we have around," he said. "We combine all these skills that we learned through the years and make really unique dishes that people enjoy."
Seki, whose grandfather is from Japan, puts a focus on seafood-based plates as Ensenada is located on the Pacific Ocean.
"Mexican cuisine is very versatile," he said, and fusions of varied traditions are becoming more and more common among chefs around the world.
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