Is Masa Mexican?

Masa, the newest restaurant from D’Amico & Partners, has inspired a ton of ink on a variety of topics that I never saw coming. Most notable is the generic cry (from Minnesotans, no less) for spicier food. But the swirling debate over whether a chic and atmospheric restaurant can also be authentic runs a close second.

There are two myths about regional Mexican food and ethnic dining in general at play here: All Mexican food is spicy, and that great ethnic eating—food that is honest and traditional—can be found only in small neighborhood dives.

As all the town’s primary reviewers noted, Masa’s a world apart from the eateries that cater to a Mexican clientele in working-class neighborhoods. But the Strib also insisted that those restaurants emphasize authentic flavors while Masa is about style and presentation (“Masa is Mexican, But Not Too Mexican,” read the headline). Jeremy Iggers posited, quoting a Mexican friend, that Masa head chef Saul Chavez had toned down his seasonings to appease local diners. His readers agreed.

“I was as surprised at how many of our customers wanted really, really spicy food,” D’Amico & Partners executive chef Jay Sparks told me. “But Mexican regional cooking is not about heat. Mexican restaurant food is not about heat. Both are about layering flavors, robust cooking styles, and scratch recipes that are as exacting as regional French cooking.”

As a member of the team that created Masa, Sparks took six trips to Mexico, did eighteen months of recipe work, ate hundreds of meals in Mexico’s vibrant markets and eateries, and even worked in the kitchen for a time at Refugio de Fonda in Mexico City. Masa’s cooks are mostly Mexican, and they all contribute recipes—many of which have been handed down by family members in Mexico, such as Masa’s universally beloved pozole verde.

At Masa, every chili is pickled in-house, every mole ingredient toasted one by one, sautéed in pork fat, then puréed, before being combined and cooked down. Only two staples are not made from scratch, on the premises: tortillas and chorizo, which Sparks and Chavez think they cannot better.

So why have so many critics and diners questioned the restaurant’s authenticity? Perhaps reverse culinary ethnocentrism is at work. Neighborhood taquerias do not constitute the entire universe of authentic Mexican restaurant cooking. Masa turns some authentically prepared food on its ear, plating it in a style found in the best white-tablecloth restaurants. This is new for folks who haven’t been to Dos Caminos in Manhattan or Topolobampo in Chicago, which have been serving stylish, exacting regional Mexican fare for years.

“We all know a $75-a-head Mexican restaurant in Minneapolis would not work, which is why we have a $2.50 taco on our menu,” Masa co-owner Richard D’Amico says. “But go eat at [Mexico City’s] Aguila y Sol and you would think you are in Paris. We wanted Masa to skew to a younger crowd, so the music and décor is appropriate to that goal.”

Masa’s food is great, and I get no argument from anyone on that matter. What earns it extra credit is authenticity. As Colman Andrews once told me, kung pao chicken needs to be cooked the way they do it in Chengdu if you want to call it “kung pao.” Anything else could be quite delicious, but it wouldn’t be kung pao—it would be a diluted version that will lead us to where we cannot recognize the real McCoy. But it’s not the plate or the wallpaper that create the confusion, it’s an inauthentic recipe.

Diners who think great pho, barbecue, or tacos can only be found in surroundings that offer up a cliché version of a certain milieu are making an argument that perpetuates only provincialism.