An oasis of Mexican food comes to St. Louis
Brew Tulum bets for a culinary experiences grounded on knowledge and integrity
The rumors were true: a truly great Mexican coffee shop and restaurant opened a block and a half away from my apartment. I never thought such a day would come. But here it is: Brew Tulum is here. I heard about it because two friends who had visited the Yucatán peninsula recently, my Mexicanist comrade Amy Wright and my WashU friend and colleague Zakiya Luna, learned that a restaurateur from the region was opening an establishment in St. Louis. It is a love story: chef Alberto, the Mexican half of the partnership, is married to a native St. Louisan, Laura. Their story has been reported in local publications, including St. Louis Magazine and the Riverfront Times.
The place is already successful. My wife Abby and I tried to go on Sunday to try it but they were full and really backed up with a big order, presumably due to Mother’s Day. But my friend Zakiya suggested we catch up in there, which was appropriate, because I first learned from her about the place. She, in turn, met chef Alberto in Tulum, and found out about the St. Louis venture.
It would not be appropriate or fair to review a restaurant based on one visit, so I just want to note a few things that joyfully impressed me. First, the food was first rate. The three meals that we got—Zakiya’s chilaquiles and my sopes, pictured below, as well as the tlacoyos I took home to Abby—were made with heirloom corn masa of multiple colors. The Maseca empire (the Thanos of corn as Gustavo Arellano calls it) has begun to crumble in Mexican fine-dining. Still, finding quality masa in places like St. Louis is nearly impossible (I ship mine from Masienda in California). To have a new restaurant in the city committed to the quality of the masa is truly enriching. They clearly make good use of it. Besides our plates, Brew Tulum offers an array of masa concoctions: tamales, atole, various forms of enchiladas and quesadillas, made with different varieties and colors of corn. The masa preparations are comparable to the variety of heirloom corn places popping up in Mexico City in recent years—such as Expendio de Maíz and Molino el Pujol.
Another feature of Brew Tulum, as the name indicates, is that their core business is coffee. Chef Alberto told me that they only sell Mexican coffee, a principle that he built after learning in Tulum that most of his customers there did not even realize Mexico was a coffee growing nation. Mexican coffee is of excellent quality, but definitely more scarce than other varieties from the continent. And in Mexico coffee is often roasted light, which contrast with the Starbucks-induced US taste for dark roasts. For someone like me, who thinks like most coffee in the US tastes as if an cigarette ashtray was brewed, the availability of Mexican coffeee—including varietals so rare and high quality that a cup of them costs up to thirty dollars—is a boon. Like many contemporary Mexican coffee shops, their hot drink menu is a mixture of traditional and neoliberal, mixing flavored lattes with old-school drinks. There is café de olla, brewed with Ceylon cinnamon and piloncillo, but also lattes flavored with mazapán (a peanut candy) and cajeta. Chilled coffees flavored with coconut and horchata co-exist with Mexican favorites, like from-scratch hot chocolate and Turkish coffee, which Mexicans (and particularly Yucatecans) adopted from the Levantine migrant community.
The Mexican community in St Louis is small and scattered—even after many years I have still to find more links to it. So a hub like this in an area of town that does not have much of a Mexican anchor is welcome. I think that the evidence that the community is finding it comes from the fact that in my two visits I heard Mexicans interacting with the owners, and none other than my student and advisee Victoria (who agreed to be shown here!) walked in wearing a Mexican soccer team shirt. It is not surprising that us Mexicans come to appreciate a place that serves food that looks like the one we know from our country, and in a setting that takes care of detail and unapologetically mixes, like many Mexico places do these days, tradition and the present.
Chef Alberto told me at the end that he enjoys teaching about Mexican food and he hopes to teach St. Louisans things about Mexico and Mexican food that have not been available to them before. I identify with this mission and I look forward to the success of this family venture. It raises an important bar that St. Louis had yet to raise: what happens when you do not think you have to accommodate to a US palate, but rather help our US neighbors to taste a Mexico they have never experienced before.