“ are leaps and bounds above anything you can buy here,” says Bravo. “That level of quality wasn’t really a thing here, so I did a ton of research between all the books I could find, talking to family members, hunting down everything I could.”Įventually, he discovered Masienda, the company whose single-origin supply chain supports family farms back in Mexico. When he helped his mother make the move to California a few years back, he stuck around for about a year, marveling at the differences between what the West Coast had available versus Florida.

Nixtamalization makes this absorption possible.īonus? The process begets some staggeringly aromatic and flavorful masa.Īnd once Tampa Bay’s restaurant industry folks starting partaking of the couple’s Mexican pandemic pop-ups, word began to spread of the tortillas made with the gem-like kernels of Bolita Amarillo, Cónico Azul, and more.īravo was born in New Jersey and grew up in Tampa in a Mexican household, but it was trips to Mexico that lit a fire under his quest for quality tortillas. We know that corn is naturally high in niacin, but the vitamin is bound to carbohydrates that prevent proper absorption. It releases myriad nutrients from the corn, including niacin and calcium, helping to prevent a host of diseases and deficiencies. Nixtamalization is the process by which dried corn is steeped and cooked in an alkaline solution before grinding and cooking-and a primary reason that Mexican civilization was able to thrive. “I got it three days before the quarantine, not knowing that I wasn’t going to have a job.”Ī smaller version of the traditional mill used to grind corn into masa, the tabletop molinito is a relatively recent innovation, one that’s been allowing chefs interested in nixtamal to explore the many varieties of corn coming out of Mexico, many of them descendants of those grown in Mesoamerica for thousands of years.īravo and LoVecchio are part of the growing masa movement in Florida, joining a handful of other eateries-Hunger Street Tacos in Orlando, Taquiza in South Beach and others-bringing the ancient practice of nixtamalization into modern light. “I had bought a molinito from Masienda so I could start playing with it,” he says. You can really taste the terroir of where the corn is grown.

As though fated, he had a project waiting in the wings. Bravo was working at Tampa’s Rocca when the COVID shutdown sent him and most of his colleagues packing. “It began as an underground pop-up during the pandemic,” says Bravo, who operates the truck with fiancée, Chef Korie LoVecchio. Pete’s lauded Lingr, he’s been moonlighting-bringing nixtamalized landrace corn tortillas to the Bay Area via the Te Invito food truck. “I’ve always been obsessed with tortillas,” Jesus Bravo tells me.Īnd I believe him, because even though he works a full-time gig as a sous chef, aiding Chef Jeffrey Jew as he melds Asian and Nordic cuisines at St.

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