Updated October 17, 2024 at 11:34 AM ET
In the kitchen of a small, colorful restaurant called Ollin in East Harlem, Jonathan Perez and his brother recently prepared a number of dishes: crispy empanadas, birria enchiladas and fluffy cemitas.
Perez鈥檚 parents opened the first iteration of Ollin in 1997, and the restaurant has been serving Mexican staples like tacos, tortas and sopes since then. But the cemita, a sandwich from the state of Puebla, where Perez鈥檚 family is from, is Ollin鈥檚 specialty.
鈥淎 lot of people don鈥檛 even know what a cemita is,鈥� Perez told NPR. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a sesame bun bread with breaded beef or breaded chicken. It鈥檚 got our homemade chipotle sauce from actual peppers 鈥� not chipotle aioli or anything like that 鈥� and it also has an herb called papalo, and it has quesillo.鈥�
Perez says that a lot of the Mexican food in New York has ; some people even refer to the city as 鈥淧uebla York.鈥� But he says the taste of home was not so prevalent across the boroughs. Noe Zepeda, a 23-year-old fashion designer and co-founder of a grassroots arts collective called Migo Events that celebrates Mexican culture, agrees with Perez.
鈥淚 used to tell my friends growing up, 鈥業 can鈥檛 find a good Mexican spot,鈥濃�� said Zepeda.
But now, he says, that鈥檚 all changed. A Pew Research Center found that about 1 in 10 restaurants in the U.S. serve Mexican food 鈥� and a by the research firm Datassential found that Mexican cuisine is growing in popularity, especially with Gen Z and millennials. Birria, tostadas and mezcal are all the rage right now. That鈥檚 why, for Hispanic Heritage Month, Migo Events pulled together a Mexican Restaurant Week that mapped out 20 must-try spots across the city.
鈥淲e never have a good reputation in New York of having good Mexican food,鈥� said Paulina Montiel, co-founder of Migo Events. 鈥淚t鈥檚 always 鈥楲.A. has good Mexican food,鈥� 鈥楾exas has good Mexican food.鈥濃��
But New York does too, says Montiel, who is originally from the West Coast. And she believes the Poblano dishes sprinkled across the city鈥檚 menus deserve their flowers, as do the people cooking them. 鈥淎 lot of us grow up and our families have worked in the restaurant industry,鈥� she explained.
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According to the , more than a quarter of all food service employees in the U.S. are Hispanic; most of them are of Mexican descent. Migo collaborator Joaly Silva, aka , has blown up making TikToks about street vendors, taquerias and mom-and-pop shops across New York City. Her grandmother, she says, used to be a street vendor. It gave the 22-year-old perspective on what it means to work hard and feed a community 鈥� that鈥檚 why she says she started shooting her videos, some of which receive hundreds of thousands of views.
鈥淚 like to create a bond with the restaurants every time I go,鈥� she said. 鈥淪o I sit down with the owners and not only highlight their business, but highlight the people behind it.鈥�
She recently did that with Andres Balbuena, one of the owners of the upscale eatery Mexi. They bonded over a shared love of pipian, a green mole sauce with pumpkin seeds, chile poblano and chile serrano, which Mexi served over chicken for Mexican Restaurant Week. Balbuena came to New York in the late 鈥�90s. He worked every restaurant role, from busboy to server to manager, before eventually opening up his own businesses. Balbuena says his first restaurant was Italian, but he has always aspired to serve Mexican cuisine. 鈥淧robably in the last 10 or 15 years, there鈥檚 been such a resurgence of not just Mexican restaurants, but Mexican identity altogether,鈥� he said.
He cites the of regional Mexican music, and young creatives like Migo Events 鈥� who host parties, publish a DIY magazine, throw fashion shows and raise funds for undocumented artists 鈥� paving the way for more avenues of Mexican expression. Noe Zepeda and Paulina Montiel say they鈥檙e proud to be reclaiming their roots, and they hope more Mexican Americans feel empowered to unapologetically pursue their passions, too.
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