Viva Mexico Newtown. Photo / Wellington NZ
With our capital’s long-time love of tacos, burritos and other Mexican specialities showing no signs of cooling off, where should you go to get the best? Emma Gleason finds out.
Piquant flavours and warming chilli have understandable appeal in a city famous for its weather, and when rendered expertly, the flavours of Mexican cuisine can transport you to the vibrant buzz of Mexico City. So, how to sate that appetite for warmer climes and world-famous food?
Plugging “Mexican restaurant” or “tacos and burritos” into your search engine will yield an abundance of results, of varying provenance. With a growing understanding of regionality and cultural nuance, many diners are increasingly seeking out eateries that can provide authenticity, or a produce-driven approach to their dishes.
It’s a distinction that has given Viva Mexico a cult following in the capital, and it has the city’s first Mexican-owned restaurants, explains co-owner Antonio Gonzalez. After spending time in other establishments, like the famous Burrito Brothers, he saw a gap in the market and an appetite for authentic food, so seized the chance to establish an eatery of his own with childhood friend David de Orta Jimenez.
They grew up together in Mexico City. “We used to cook with our grandmothers and mothers; Mexico has a big culture of cooking,” says Gonzalez, who trained as an industrial designer before cheffing, and brought those skills to fitting out their space. “We did it ourselves.” That ethos extends to their food too.
“It tastes better and it feels better when you can say ‘I did all this with my hands’,” he says. “Cooking needs two ingredients: time and love. You have to put so much love into what you’re doing, believe that you love it, and do it for fun more than money. And after that, you need to spend some time cooking; one sauce takes four hours just to have sauce.” They make everything from scratch. “Even hot sauces. We never have bottles on our tables. Everyone says where’s the Tabasco sauce!”
And tortillas — which the crew is now too busy to make in-house, “they’re not as easy as you think!”, but get from a trusted source — are an “ancestor recipe” from the Aztec culture, and corn was always key to nutrition. “Some of the foods in Mexico are protected by Unesco,” he says. “[It’s also] one of the only countries not accepting genetically modified corn. It would ruin the industry.”
The history of Mexican cuisine is something he loves to share. “Our culture was 3000 years before Europeans came to Mexico, we have very old recipes, a very old culture,” says Gonzalez. “When people think Mexican, they think sombreros and tequilas, but it’s so much more than that.”
Beyond the regional differences, specialities and traditions of Mexican cooking, there’s also the diasporic evolution of food shaped by the Mexican community in the US — most notably, Tex-Mex, a style of cuisine that’s had a huge influence on American, and indeed global, eating habits far beyond the borders of the state of Texas.
That’s the wheelhouse of caravan-based business Taco Addicts. Founder Amber Sturtz grew up in Austin, where “you can’t drive a block or throw a rock without seeing a taqueria,” and she established Taco Addicts in 2016 to share the Tex-Mex food she loves with Wellingtonians.
“A lot of people have this idea that Tex-Mex is yellow cheese and sour cream, ground beef and crispy taco shells. This isn’t what Tex-Mex is to me. It’s fresh, it’s delicious, it’s inspired by Mexico but it uses what is locally available.” Sturtz and her team use locally grown wheat and New Zealand cold-pressed sunflower oil for their tortillas, free-range meat and seasonal vegetables.
And for that famous heat? “We also use a lot of chili, but in various forms — we have at least five different chili powders in our kitchen,” she explains. “When chilies are in season, I buy kilos and kilos fresh and then freeze them so I have them year round.”
But it’s not all about heat. “Not everything has to be spicy, but almost everything in Mexico has a lot of flavour. They use citrus — orange, grapefruit, lime juice — in marinades and sauces. The acid in citrus can help break down the fibres of meat, so it’s actually a really good tenderiser.”
Though “Austin-style” Taco Addicts is a Tex-Mex operation, Sturtz draws a lot of inspiration from Mexico. “In Mexico, tacos are traditionally very simple,” she explains, with meat, fresh coriander, onion, lime and salsa. And eaten on the go. “In a hurry, standing up, from a street vendor.”
Speaking of traditions, Sturtz shares some expert tips for the eating of it all. “Tilt your head, not the taco! Don’t try and fold the end of the taco to make it a burrito — it’s better if you squeeze the top together, hold the taco parallel to the plate and tilt your head each time you take a bite. This will keep a lot of the ingredients from falling out the other side. Also, once you start ... you kind of just have to commit ... don’t put the taco down.”
Aotearoa’s relationship with Mexico goes back a long time; 2023 marks 50 years of international relations, and the Embassy of Mexico, headquartered in Wellington, helps promote the country’s culture and food in Aotearoa.
This connection spans far beyond diplomacy. “New Zealanders are a well-travelled bunch, and a lot of people in Wellington have spent time in Mexico, Central America and the US,” says Sturtz. “It sounds cliche and a thousand people have said it, but food connects us — the tastes and the smells transport us back to conversations, travels abroad, people we’ve connected with; and that’s a really special way to access memories.”
Taco Addicts sell their house-made products like salsa roja and salsa verde online too: stock up at downtoearthorganics.co.nz and tacoaddicts.co.nz. There are also specialty retailers like Pachamama Latino Store in Hillcrest, and many online like mexifoods.co.nz and aycaramba.co.nz.
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