TORONTO’S MEXICAN REVOLUTIONARY

BY MARY LUZ MEJIA

To understand why Mexican food is so near and dear to Chef Jose Hadad’s culinary heart, you need only listen to one particular story of his: “When I was a kid [in Mexico], I remember my dad would wake us up at seven to get some traditional lamb tacos and broth.My brothers and I would be grumpy because it was early and Dad would say, ‘Come on guys – they’re going to run out of tacos by ten thirty!’ And then, sitting down in a street stall, eating, I would say, ‘Wow! If this is so good, imagine when I go to cooking school and learn Italian and French food!’ And while I’m glad I did, nothing has ever satisfied me more or touched my soul like that food, and those memories,” Hadad happily reminisces.

Another event seems in retrospect to have foreshadowed his career path, as well. When he was eleven, Hadad’s grandmother asked him to fetch her a snack. The precocious boy, remembering his father telling him about a trip to London where he’d savoured Serrano ham with melon, decided he’d replicate this for his sophisticated grandmother. He ran out and bought some thinly sliced Serrano ham from a deli and picked a melon from his family’s yard in Mexico City. When he presented the ham-wrapped melon to his abuelita, she called out to his mother in the next room, “This boy is going to be a chef!” And seven years later, Jose Hadad was, indeed, staging in some of Mexico City’s best restaurants.

But he had his heart set on travelling and coming to Canada to study at George Brown College’s chef school. By January 2001, Hadad was a full-time culinary student at this Toronto school while working part-time at a local pub. His decision to arrive in Toronto in the dead of winter didn’t cool his vision for the future. He says that “Canada is the best country in the world to live in. There’s equality here. If you work hard [and] you’re smart, you’ll get to where you want to go. You pave your own road here and I like that.”

Hadad started laying the foundation for that road after graduating and working for some of the area’s top toques. He cooked at Mark McEwan’s Bymark for a year and was profoundly inspired by life on the working farm of Michael Stadtländer, where he contributed to Eigensinn Farm’s Heaven on Earth Project.

After returning to Toronto, a visit to St. Lawrence Market while researching tortillas proved life changing. A shop owner asked him if he would make guacamole for him. It was a light-bulb moment and Hadad took on the challenge with guns blazing, creating his company, Mad Mexican, in 2005. “I always wanted to share with people the Mexican food that I grew up eating so they could taste what it’s supposed to be like,” he explains.

His Mad Mexican stall at St. Lawrence Market provided Hadad with the first outlet to do just that. Authentic small-batch, hand-made chunky guacamole, roasted tomatillo avocado salsa, salsa verde, salsa roja (made with dried morita chiles) and bite-sized corn nacho chips are just some of Mad Mexican’s offerings. No short cuts (such as the common commercial practice of adding mayonnaise or sour cream to guacamole) were taken, and while this proved advantageous because no one else at the time was making a similar artisanal product, it also mean he had to create a market for the goods.

He let customers sample the wares at St. Lawrence Market for themselves, and sales started taking off. “I started by selling $90 worth of chips and salsa and I was like, wow, people are buying it! The next weekend it would be $120 and then $200 in sales. I felt great and all of a sudden, Mad Mexican owns us – we don’t own it,” says Hadad. His business and life partner Diane Lee adds, “It’s a huge responsibility to bring fresh salsas to people. [If ] we’d take a week off at the beginning, customers would come up to us and say, ‘Where the hell were you last week? I needed my guacamole!’ No kidding!” That kind of loyalty garnered the attention of numerous gourmet food shops in the GTA. Hadad, however, is happy with his six-employee outfit, saying he doesn’t want to get too big because he’d lose the hand-made authenticity of his product.

It’s that same passion and what Lee calls his need to keeping pushing the envelope that in 2008 led Hadad, along with a business partner, to open Frida Restaurant and Wine Bar on Eglinton Avenue West. The restaurant is named after the spirited painter Frida Kahlo who, according to Lee, was very much like her partner: “Her boundaries were limitless and free; everything that she wanted to do, she did. That was a huge inspiration for Jose because that is very much his personality.” The menu offers a focused, elegant take on Mexican fare. From his own duck carnitas creation to Oaxaca cheese-stuffed poblano chiles in a tomato and epazote sauce, Hadad insists he’s just cooking food that satisfies his soul. His favourite item to eat and make is the nineteen-ingredient mole poblano sauce in which he bathes seared quail. Restaurant critics have lauded Frida as one of the most authentic options in the city for diners seeking something other than Mexican street eats. Hadad is pleased but wants to take things a step further, saying, “I want to educate the people that want to be educated about Mexican food. I want that to be available for them.” Lee adds, “People need to understand the difference between Tex-Mex and Mexican food. A lot of times, people have a burrito and think this is great Mexican food. Jose never had a burrito until he came to Canada, or fried, hard tacos; they’re always soft-shelled tacos in Mexico. I think he’s gotten people excited with his food.”

And he is in turn excited to use locally sourced ingredients that support the area’s food producers and farmers. “I’ve been buying beautiful organic tomatoes from Akeel Shah of Wise Greens,” Hadad relates, adding, “It was his first harvest this year. He used to be a neuroscientist in Pakistan and he decided he’d be a farmer here.” The lamb served at Frida is always from Ontario, as is most of his produce (including locally grown tomatillos when in season), and his Mexican-style cheese, queso cotija, is produced by Mexican Mennonites in Quebec. Hadad’s philosophy is this: “I don’t think it’s fair that we buy tomatoes and produce from the States where they’re highly subsidized while our farmers are starving here because they cannot compete. I think it should be against the law to sell anything that’s not from Ontario when Ontario produce is in season. Period. So I do my bit to help when I can.” At a recent dinner at Frida featuring the Oaxacan Chef Pilar Cabrera, both chefs used Ontario ingredients to create a six-course Mexican tasting menu just in time for Mexican Independence Day. Cabrera’s cream of chile poblano highlighted fresh Ontario corn, zucchini and woodland mushrooms, while Hadad offered guests local lamb tamales with Ontario spinach, tomato-morita sauce and crumbled Woolwich Dairy goat cheese.

Of his Mexican counterpart, Hadad says, “Pilar was a hugely inspirational figure in my life. This is a woman who cooks from the heart. Having her cook with me made me feel like I was doing the right thing.” Cabrera adds, “I admire the passion Jose has for everything that he does in the kitchen and outside. When I tasted Jose’s guacamole, [I was] transported to Mexico; it was just like ours. I think Canadians are very lucky to have Frida. The flavours and combinations are just like the ones you can enjoy at any authentic Mexican restaurant in Mexico.” Great praise from the woman who has taught Chef Rick Bayless a culinary trick or two, and it’s this kind of feedback from chefs and guests that keeps Hadad going. “My currency is when people tell me that they really like my food, when they say, ‘This is better than the Mexican food I’ve had in Tucson’ or wherever; that’s how I get paid. It appeases me that I’m building for the future – a landmark.” It’s a good thing Pepe (as Hadad is affectionately known) likes the adrenalin rush of owning and operating two Mexican food businesses. As he says, “It’s very intense, but I like life pinching me and saying ‘you’re alive, you’re here!’ I like to be awake.”

And in Toronto we’re glad to be awoken too, even though our early morning call isn’t for a seven-in-the-morning lamb barbacoa feast at a roadside in Mexico City.

Frida Restaurant and Bar
999 Eglinton Ave.West, Toronto
(416) 787-2221
www.fridarestaurant.ca

Mad Mexican
(647) 722-4302
www.madmexican.ca

Mary Luz Mejia (www.maryluzmejia.com) comes by her love of all Latin food honestly as she’s Colombian-born and her father’s last names (Mejia Diaz) are as Mexican as they get. Her new venture, www.sizzlingcommunications.com, brought Pilar Cabrera and Jose Hadad together this fall at one of seven dining events Mary Luz curated to bring a taste of Oaxaca to Toronto.