Salt Lake restaurant Monarca recognized by Mexican Consulate for quality, authenticity

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Monarca in Salt Lake City received the Sello M from the Mexican Consulate.
The award recognizes Monarca's authentic Mexican cuisine using traditional techniques and ingredients.
Monarca is Utah's first restaurant to earn this honor.

SALT LAKE CITY — Alfonso and Claudia Brito have steadily climbed the ladder in the food business.

"We started with a cart, a taco cart. Then we got a food truck, then we made Santo Taco," said Claudia Brito, referencing the two taquerias she and her husband own — one in downtown Salt Lake City, the other in the Rose Park neighborhood.

Now with Monarca, a more upscale Mexican restaurant the Britos opened in 2021, they've taken another step up the ladder. The Mexican Consulate in Salt Lake City on Tuesday awarded the downtown restaurant with a Sello M, or M Seal, recognizing the quality and authenticity of the Mexican fare it offers.

"It's not a recognition that's given out easily," said Antonio Cruz Díaz, acting general consul of the consulate. "It requires a restaurant to show through a rigorous evaluation process that its gastronomic offerings are based on Mexican recipes and that it uses ingredients and traditional techniques and that it uses workers trained in authentic Mexican cooking."

Monarca is the first restaurant in Utah to get the Sello M, part of an initiative of the Mexican Foreign Ministry to promote authentic Mexican food offerings around the world. Aside from Monarca, 38 restaurants around the United States alone have been granted the recognition, including 17 in the Los Angeles area.

Cruz singled out the traditional process of nixtamalization that Monarca follows in preparing corn to make tortillas, its use of corn from the Mexican state of Oaxaca, and its use of other products sourced locally in Utah. He also cited the innovative touches the Britos bring to the food they offer.

Monarca, a Mexican restaurant in Salt Lake City, received special recognition on Tuesday from the Mexican Consulate for the quality and authenticity of its food. (Photo: Tim Vandenack, KSL.com)

"This restaurant has known how to honor its roots while not forgetting about innovation. Every plate that comes from the kitchen has a story," Cruz said.

Alfonso Brito said the Monarca menu regularly changes. He melds traditional Mexican cuisine with innovation, always wanting to experiment and get better.

"As a chef, I always try to improve and get educated," he said, noting three months he spent last year at Cocina Hermanos Torres, a restaurant in Barcelona, Spain, with three Michelin stars.

Spanish colonizers in what is now Mexico moved cuisine in a new direction, and Alfonso Brito wanted the chance to delve into that aspect of Mexico's food history.

Claudia Brito emphasized the focus on customers and freshness at Monarca, named for the monarch butterfly.

"What we do is bring a piece of our culture and give it to our clients," she said. "We try to do everything from scratch. We try to avoid using anything canned in our food."

Santo Taco was featured on the Food Network program "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives," hosted by Guy Fieri — a definite highlight for a restaurant operator. But Claudia Brito expressed particular pride in getting the Sello M.

"The pride I have is overflowing. This is for my family," she said, noting the long hours and work that she, her husband and their four kids have put into the family food operations. "As a family, it's cost us. But for me, it's an honor to be able to represent Mexico."

Alfonso Brito is from the Mexican state of Veracruz, while Claudia Brito is from Mexico City.

Pictured are Monarca operators Alfonso Brito (left), Claudia Brito (right) and Antonio Cruz Díaz, acting general consul of the Mexican Consulate in Utah. The Mexican restaurant in Salt Lake City received special recognition on Tuesday from the Mexican Consulate for the quality and authenticity of its food. (Photo: Tim Vandenack, KSL.com)

"We come from restaurant families; both sides own restaurants in Mexico," Alfonso Brito said. "I grew up in a restaurant. The very first picture you see of me as a baby is in the back of the kitchen. It's in our veins."

Now, he wants to pass the food baton to the couple's four children, though he also dreams of opening a new restaurant or two. At the same time, he hopes the recognition Monarca received continues at other Mexican restaurants in Utah. The Sello M program recognizes three categories of locales: restaurants, food trucks or food booths, and pop-up or catering operations.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.