“Without corn, there’s no country.”
At Milpero, the Fonda Fina Hospitality Group’s astonishing new dining destination in RiNo, chef-partner Johnny Curiel likes to welcome the guests seated around the counter with that famous slogan. It’s more poetic in Spanish—sin maíz no hay país—but it resonates throughout the 16-course tasting nonetheless.
From the first sip of the fermented beverage called tejuino onward to tamales, flautas, tostadas, and more, the menu is a moving testament to the importance of corn in Mexico not merely as an ingredient or even a crop but as a cultural and spiritual force of nature.
After all, it originated there some 9,000 years ago, when Mesoamericans began cultivating the seeds of its wild ancestor. Over time, they discovered how to nixtamalize it, or treat it with an alkaline solution, in order to turn it into a dough called masa. To echo the slogan, without masa, there’s no tortilla, which means no tacos, never mind tamales, flautas, quesadillas, sopes, gorditas, and so on. In short, there’s no Mexican food as we know it.
Mexican Methodology
No wonder, then, that Curiel’s “lifetime goal is to bring awareness to corn,” in his words. That’s evident not just at Milpero but all his restaurants, starting with the MICHELIN-starred LoHi flagship Alma Fonda Fina, where the Guadalajara native has been nixtamalizing and milling corn for tortillas “since day one.”
Where does the mission end? Well, keep reading and you’ll see that “the sky’s the limit,” as he put it, adding that “we’re in the process of building a whole tortilleria in our test kitchen right now.” But Curiel’s not the only missionary of masa operating in the Mile High City today.
“I just really wanted to put corn and nixtamal and masa on the pedestal they deserve to be on, so that we can respect them as much as we do bread and the artisans who make that, or pasta and the artisans who make that,” said Erasmo Casiano. In fact, the chef-owner of Xiquita in Uptown has explicitly dedicated a portion of his menu to masa-based dishes, “just like an Italian restaurant has a section for pasta. It’s the same thought process.”
But it’s hardly the same production process: Making masa is a labor of love worth describing in detail. “We start with a nixtamal solution, which consists of calcium hydroxide, we throw the corn in there, and we take it to a rolling boil,” explained Casiano. “We carefully monitor it so it doesn’t scorch on the bottom for about an hour and 15 [minutes]. And then we let it sit overnight, soaking in that same solution for another 16 hours.”
The next morning, he continued, “We come in and do what I like to call the spiritual rinse. We wash the impurities off these grains pretty carefully, as the outside starts to gelatinize. But we do want to keep some of the gelatinized pieces, because that’s what gives our tortillas that buoyancy that people love—chewy but crisp on the outside.”
The cooked, cleaned corn grain is then milled in a molino, “which essentially means a grinder,” according to Casiano. “There are two stone wheels in it. Corn being ground by basalt, lava stone, is very important. . . . It does give off an essence of that stone, and I think that’s a really important flavor component in our tortillas. They just taste a lot more natural.”
Tortilla Production on a Larger Scale
Over in Aurora, chef Michael Diaz de Leon shares Casiano’s reverence for that all-important piece of equipment. Not only did he and partner Tommy Lee name their Stanley Marketplace taqueria after it, but they built a whole room to showcase what he believes to be “the biggest molino within a restaurant in the state of Colorado.” Through a glass partition, guests can watch his team make tortillas by hand day in and day out—more than 75,000 since Molino Chido opened late last year.
“I had been nixtamalizing and grinding corn on a smaller scale at BRUTØ,” noted Diaz de Leon, referring to the MICHELIN-starred chef’s counter where he previously worked with Kelly Whitaker (more on him later). “But this was a whole different ballgame; it took me a good month to feel comfortable with the results.”
“Now we cook anywhere from 30 to 50 pounds of raw corn a day, which translates to close to 100 pounds of cooked masa. And every single day that I’m here, I still go into that molino room and troubleshoot—I eat about 10 tortillas a day just to see how the hydration is, et cetera.”
Such quality control will no doubt serve Diaz de Leon well as he expands his operation: He’s currently in talks to sell Molino Chido’s tortillas in grocery stores. “It’s a dream of mine to have our product at your table,” he said—but that dream isn’t just for himself.
Following the lead of Casiano at Xiquita, Diaz de Leon works with distributor Hearty Provisions to bring in non-GMO yellow and blue corn from Bow & Arrow, a company formed in 1962 by the Ute Mountain Ute tribe out in Montezuma County, where it maintains a 7,700-acre farm. (Those neat stacks of grain sacks lining Molino Chido’s dining room aren’t just for looks.)
But as he moves into retail, he explained, his field of vision is broadening. “My goal is to work directly with farmers to help them grow more corn in Colorado . . . maybe a red corn or a purple corn,” he said. “They do it in Mexico; why can’t we do it here?”
After all, local sourcing is key to upholding the values of both sustainability and community to which most chefs these days, Mexican or otherwise, subscribe. Which brings us back to Curiel and Whitaker.
The Colorado Connection
Curiel does continue to obtain some strains of corn from Mexico, including Tuxpeño Dorado and Cónico Azul, because “they’re amazing, and the relationships that we have with farmers [there] are amazing,” he said. “But as we grow, if we can say, ‘Hey, we’re going to get a percentage of corn in Colorado, because this is our state and our economy and our farmers need our support [too], I feel like we all win.”
That’s a sentiment that Whitaker shares wholeheartedly. The James Beard Award–winning co-founder of the Id Est Hospitality group is renowned not just as the chef-restaurateur behind BRUTØ and two-MICHELIN-starred The Wolf’s Tailor, among others, but also as a visionary who’s helping to shape the future of local foodways. Case in point: Dry Storage, his Boulder-based heirloom grain company and mill as well as a cafe and bakery.
“We harvested 1,200,000 pounds of wheat this year on 800 acres, all organic, all regenerative, in five growing areas of Colorado,” Whitaker noted. “That’s insane, [considering] it started with me in the back of [Italian restaurant] Basta, just trying to get better flour for pasta. I wasn’t thinking about planting it. When I hit roadblocks, then I was like, ‘Wait, no one’s really growing wheat in a way that I can use for pizza.’ So I had to get involved. I’m an activist because I was just fighting for the best food in my kitchens—fighting for more deliciousness, period.”
As with wheat, so with corn. Though BRUTØ has evolved considerably since 2019, it opened as “a corn-influenced restaurant,” according to Whitaker, because “I was obsessed with masa. I was like, ‘I need this flavor in my kitchen.’ I wasn’t trying to grow corn.” Over the years, however, he became equally obsessed with it as a crop.
“Something like one million acres are grown in Colorado, and it’s all for fuel and [products] like corn syrup,” Whitaker pointed out. “It’s an incredibly destructive thing, both for your health and for the land.” So when The Wolf’s Tailor received its second MICHELIN star last year, an idea sprouted: “We’re going to use this moment to go plant corn and then [build a menu around it] to get people talking about it.” But this time, he wasn’t inclined to go it alone.
“It took me 10 years to get to where I am with wheat,” Whitaker acknowledged. “I’m like, ‘How can I get there faster?’ By looking at this amazing community of chefs who are playing with corn right now. And that’s when I got Johnny involved. I was like, ‘Hey, dude, you really have an amazing platform, and I can see this going far.’”
A Path to Growing Corn
By fall, he and Curiel had partnered with the MASA Seed Foundation in Boulder to grow 20 acres of Chihuahua blue, Oaxaca green, and Concha white corn. (The name of the heirloom seed bank and farm is an incredible coincidence: It’s not a reference to dough but an acronym for Mutual Admiration Seed Association.)
Though MASA’s founder, Richard Pecoraro, has been working with the plant seeds for decades, said director of operations Laura Allard, “These open-pollinated heritage corns are not grown in Colorado for food. But that’s no reason not to try them. The Chihuahua blue is known for tolerance to stress, and the Concha white tends to do really well with yields, even under the solar intensity.”
Thanks to some assistance from chef Eric Skokan of Boulder’s Black Cat Organic Farm, who grows polenta corn, the results of the first harvest in January were promising. Yielding 5,000 pounds, that corn has made its way into dishes at both Milpero and The Wolf’s Tailor.
Putting sweet varieties like Olathe corn aside, Curiel said the question now is, “How many more people can get on board? If we started with 20 acres, can we be doing 200 acres with chefs other than just us in 10 years?” Agreed Whitaker, “This isn’t a short-sighted one-off. This is a generational project.”
A Few Dishes to Try
What does all this mean for you, dear diner? As Whitaker put it, more deliciousness.
On your next visit to Xiquita, don’t miss the corn husk–wrapped tamal de cuanaca (chicken tamale), insisted Casiano, adding, “You have to have a freshly steamed tamal that’s rested for 20 minutes before you really enjoy it, because that rested, steamed masa has a very distinctive texture. Here’s the cool thing: We take the drippings that come from our pollo asado and fold them into the masa, which gives us such a great flavor and mouthfeel.”
Curiel likewise singled out the tamal he serves with Hokkaido uni, hoja santa oil, and jocoque at Milpero insofar as it represents “the whole project, right? It talks not only about corn and how we use it as masa, but also about the food of the milperos, the people that tend to the cornfields”—hence the restaurant’s name. “A tamal was something that they could take in their pockets and eat while they were in the middle of the field. I could talk for 20 minutes explaining to guests how important that dish is.”
As for The Wolf’s Tailor, ask not what Whitaker, chef Taylor Stark, and pastry chef Emily Thompson are currently doing with corn; ask rather “what aren’t they doing?” They make miso and spices and blini for caviar service and empanada-like tetelas with duck. They even make chocolate with corn and have partnered with Novel Strand Brewing Company on a corn beer.
“Corn is typically used in beer as a cheap way to extend it, but we actually took the reverse approach,” said Whitaker. “We’re using these heirloom masa corns to make a really beautiful product.”
Finally, when you go to Molino Chido, be sure to order (at least) one dish that features yellow corn and another that features blue. “For me, if you fry the yellow corn, there’s this really wonderful sweetness that comes out of it, whereas the blue corn is more versatile for the flat-top and has this beautiful, nutty, roasty flavor,” explained Diaz de Leon, who summed things up poignantly.
“My work with corn is tied to my ancestry—it’s a very personal and cultural thing that my colleagues and I are doing here, and we’re really proud to be at the forefront of showcasing how beautiful corn is for our community,” he said. “The foundation of everything is maís.”
