An extra soul at Alma

Alma, a small gourmet restaurant on Avenue Lajoie, in Outremont, has slowly taken a “modern Mexican” turn in the last year, like several renowned restaurants in Mexico City and Oaxaca. Its “carte blanche” menu was a huge favorite in 2023.

This new identity of Alma is closely linked to La Quebequita, because chef Juan Lopez Luna prepares his masa there, using Mexican criollo corn that he buys from the Californian company Masienda. Soon he would attempt to trade directly with farmers in his home state of Tlaxcala and encourage them to grow heirloom corn varieties.

With his precious dough, Juan, for example, makes tetelas which rest on a morita pepper and fig sauce. The addition of a beautiful slice of foie gras to the cloth on each small stuffed triangle whose origins date back to pre-Columbian times is THE Alma touch.

In this dish, as well as in the sweetbreads on mole verde and in the carnitas croqueta garnished with a white anchovy, the culinary genius of Juan Lopez Luna is finally revealed.

It is said that children who learn several languages ​​simultaneously can sometimes take longer to express themselves. What if it was the same thing in cooking?

Like the vast majority of chefs, Juan was first trained in French and Italian cuisine, then later became interested in the Catalan repertoire. It is only very recently that the person who grew up with tortillas on the table morning, noon and evening has rediscovered his culinary roots and skillfully found a way to merge all his baggage.

Story of a trip

Juan’s story resembles that of many, many Mexican immigrants who left their country in search of the famous, but now less glorious, “American Dream.”

“I come from a very small village in the state of Tlaxcala. Several of my friends left for the United States when they were only 12 or 14 years old, the chef tells us in his car, as we return from Sherbrooke, after a visit to La Quebequita. At the time, the prospect of going to work in Mexico was not very attractive. It was said to be a dangerous city. »

It was at 16 that the teenager who worked in a clothing factory began to think about trying his luck further north.

He remembered how his family’s crumbling home had benefited from his father’s work in the Ontario pepper fields, until pesticides made him ill and prevented him from returning.

But it was one of his friends who finally convinced him, returning to the village at the age of 17 with brand new Nike shoes and original CDs, not like the copies that were sold at the store. tiendita from his country. In the United States, this friend was a house painter and earned US$50 a week, while Juan only pocketed $80 a month for working six days out of seven.

His memories of the (irregular) crossing are vivid. “My group, in which there were four other people from the village, crossed the desert for three days with the coyote. We walked for an hour, with a 15 minute break. They gave us pills so we wouldn’t fall asleep. At the border there was a pickup truck, a Camaro and a Dodge Ram. I was in the Ram and they told me: “If we ever come across the patrol, you get out of the car, you run in that direction, you jump over the fence and then they won’t be able to “catch because you will be on indigenous territory.” »

We could write a book about Juan’s tribulations, which would probably look a little like The Migrant Chef: The Life and Times of Lalo García, published recently, less time in prison. I’ll stick to the short version!

After several odd jobs, Juan found himself in an Italian restaurant in Jackson Hole, a ski resort in Wyoming. This is where working in the kitchen went from just making a living to being a possible career.

While he was taming the pizza oven at the front of the room, Juan met Lindsay Brennan, a new employee on duty, now his partner on all fronts. Together, they traveled around, spending a year in Puerto Escondido, in a six-table micro-restaurant, then a few years in Ottawa, where the chef thought about following official training, but ultimately opted for “the school of life” , working at Town and Stella.

In Montreal, Juan rose through the ranks in the kitchen to the position of sous chef at the now defunct Dining Room, avenue du Mont-Royal Est. He also worked at the Gema pizzeria, before opening Farine in 2015.

“I wanted the best Italian cuisine in Montreal to be made by a Mexican! », he says, laughing today at his aspirations. Farine turned off her bread and pizza ovens in early 2019, just as Juan and Lindsay’s first real baby, Alma, was born.

It is on the pretty avenue Lajoie that the couple set up their home. And it is here that, five years later, I ate one of my best meals of the year 2023. It was not my first time at Alma and I also have my habits at the neighboring address, Tinc Set, which specializes in Catalan wine, Barcelona-style rotisserie chicken and tapas. The identity of Alma has always been quite mixed, between Italian and Catalan cuisine.

That all changed a year ago, when Juan and Lindsay took a trip to the state and city of Oaxaca, a favorite destination for many chefs these days. A meal at the mother-son Alfonsina restaurant acted as an epiphany for Juan.

Someone who had never cooked the dishes of his childhood in a professional context began to integrate elements into the “carte blanche” menu at Alma. A tostada here, a mole there.

In October, the couple, inspired by the famous Pujol restaurant in Mexico, even launched taco “omakase”. These are meals for four hands (sometimes more!), in seven courses, during which Juan and his accomplices have fun combining Quebec ingredients (sea urchins, tuna from Gaspésie, etc.), Mexican flavors and masa de Sherbrooke, made from corn from Oaxaca or Tlaxcala.

The next taco “omakase” event will take place on Sunday, February 4, with Marc Cohen from Lawrence, at a cost of $99 per person (limited places). The next one will take place on March 3 (guest chef revealed soon).

Visit the Alma website

In Defense of Modern Mexican Cuisine

Prejudices persist about Mexican cuisine. It shouldn’t cost too much! Why pay $100 for a high-end taco meal when you can find these distinctive flavors on the streets of Mexico City for a few pesos?

If Mexico is today taken by storm by chefs and gastronomes from all over the world, the state of Oaxaca in particular, it is largely thanks to chefs like Enrique Olvera (Pujol, in Mexico, and Cosme, in New York, among others), Lalo García (Máximo), Elena Reygadas (Rosetta), Mónica Patiño (La Taberna del León) and several others. The latter succeeded in demonstrating that the specialties of their country had their place alongside the great European classics considered for decades as the only possible icons of “real” gastronomy. Today, Mexico has its place in the pantheon of the world’s best cuisines (street food included) because top chefs have elevated it.