Enrique Olvera

Credits Brambilla-Serrani

Credits Brambilla-Serrani

Pujol

calle Tennyson, 133
1156 - Città del Messico - Polanco IV Sección
+52 55 55454111
info@pujol.com.mx

Forget margaritas and guacamole, burritos and fajitas. If Enrique Olvera has become a part of the culinary dictionary of his large country, it’s because he’s chosen to interpret it not by sending postcards all around the world, but by perceiving its movement, often guiding it: «I love our traditions and respect them, but I cannot improve them, they’re already perfect; so I want to create something new for the generations to come», he often says.

This way of historicizing his own work could give the idea of an enlightened man (and indeed Olvera is one) but a little presumptuous (and he’s not: in fact he’s known for his humbleness). He belongs to the generation in between (he’s from 1976), but he’s an aware chef, fully committed, because he’s sure that cooking and eating are political acts that can improve (or worsen) the world.

His style is minimalistic, thanks to a long process getting to the bone of things, like the great artists who make a very complex gesture seem simple. His tacos are easy to understand, just like the ordinary street food, but at the same time they’re talismans of contemporary spirituality. A strongpoint of Olvera’s cuisine in Pujol (opened in 2000 in that crazy big machine of humanity that makes Mexico City) is his archive of local flavours, ingredients and techniques, a gastronomic Mexipedia from which to draw without any nostalgia but looking at the future, because there’s nothing more unusual than the usual, if you look at it from a different perspective.

His signature recipes is mole, a thick and dark sauce made with various ingredients and interpretations, which he prepares with the same principle of mother yeast: themole is two or three years old, constantly refreshed by a new one and the two – the old and the new – are presented in the same dish, like a disc inside a circle, recalling the Aztec calendar, a metaphor of time and of what it does to us, and what we do to it.

Has participated in

Identità Milano


by

Andrea Cuomo

Roman, now living in Milan, sommelier, he's reporter of Il Giornale. He's been writing about taste for years