“Without corn there is no country,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said at her inauguration in 2024. Corn, together with chili and beans, forms the holy trinity of Mexican cuisine. A cuisine that, like so many others, has been passed down from generation to generation – not only as a way to eat and survive, but also to keep the heritage alive, to preserve techniques, recipes and dishes.
And it’s usually women who do that. When the now disgraced Danish chef René Redzepi of Noma opened a pop-up in Mexico, he turned to women for the traditional recipes that they lovingly guard. To make the famous corn tortillas, for example, but also the mole, a sauce that has been part of Mexican cuisine for centuries and which has conquered a place in international cuisines in recent years.
Mexican cuisine turns every dreary day into a sunny one and sets stirring music in your head. If you’re lucky and in a good restaurant, that is. We are not immediately convinced of this when we enter Nixtamal in Mijdrecht.
The restaurant of Peruvian chef Angiolina Sumaria is located next to a gas station on the N201 in Mijdrecht. From the outside it looks like the kind of roadhouse you should avoid. But just as the cover doesn’t say everything about a book, a location and depressing appearance don’t necessarily say everything about a restaurant either. But it starts unpromisingly. Once inside we are ignored for a long time and after we take a seat, the waiter walks by ostentatiously for a while without making eye contact.
Nixtamal’s small menu consists of well-known classics and parihuela, a fish soup that I have never seen on the menu in the Netherlands before. The menu promises a mix of seafood, but it turns out to be replaced by pieces of white fish. The basis is a tomato broth finely filled with crispy peas, corn and carrot. Pleasantly warming and aromatic. My dining companion has nothing to say about it, but I think the soup could be lifted by some fresh coriander for extra spiciness and depth.
Coriander, brought to Mexico by the Spanish invaders in the sixteenth century, is an important herb in Mexican cuisine (and in mine, I absolutely love it), but I notice that at Nixtamal they don’t use it in the dishes we order. Coriander is especially indispensable in tacos, together with raw onion, lime and chili peppers, but it is missing here.
The quesadilla, a grilled taco, is filled with well-seasoned chicken, Mexican oaxaca cheese, salsa verde and guacamole. The tacos were successful, filled with breaded and crispy fried fish with a lime mayonnaise and fresh pepper-lime dressing with a hint of spice.
Shrimp ceviche is characterized by a slightly spicy accent, it tingles very gently on the tongue, and the moderate acidity that is pleasant. Fresh and invigorating.
Across the board, it is noticeable that the kitchen is sparing with the peppers and distinct flavors, perhaps so as not to deter Dutch guests. It’s all tasty, but that typical explosion is missing.
The mole has something sweet, even cocoa-like, but I miss the layering
The heaviest dish we order are the delicious enchiladas de mole: corn tortillas filled with chicken, drizzled with a mole sauce and topped with queso fresco, onion and sour cream.
Mole is a traditionally time-consuming sauce made from chili peppers, spices, nuts, fruit and sometimes chocolate. The ingredients are first roasted and then cooked over low heat for hours until a creamy substance. The result is a complex sauce with a lot of depth. The mole in these enchiladas has something sweet, even cocoa-like, but I miss the layering that characterizes the sauce.
From the moment I looked at the restaurant’s menu online, the tres leches dessert beckoned. Tres leches is a famous pie/cake throughout Latin America, but Mexico and Nicaragua especially lay claim to it. It is a wet cake based on evaporated milk, condensed milk and whole milk, hence the name. According to some sources, tres leches is descended from European variants such as zuppa inglese and trifle; I won’t venture into that discussion. More importantly, I find it a sensual dessert, almost an aphrodisiac. Soft, moist, decadent, especially if it has an extra layer of meringue or, as here, a layer of whipped cream with passion fruit sauce. Significantly better than a dry variety I recently ate in Seville.
My dining companion also has a satisfying, light dessert, carlota de limón: layers of maria cookies soaked in lime juice and with a creamy condensed milk filling.
As the traffic rushes by, we look out at the sun setting in the meadow. After the less than warm reception, we braced ourselves for disappointment, but the later thawed service and dishes gave the evening an unexpected twist.
That you can eat well in such a dreary place. Who would have thought that?
