Feliz cumpleaños, La Boca Loca!

Our favourite Mira­mar Mex­i­can restau­rant is turn­ing one, and to cel­e­brate, they invit­ed us along to learn how to make tor­tillas, and to taste some tequi­la. It’s a hard life being a Welling­ton­ista, but if we have to rub shoul­ders with mouth heroes like Jon­ny and Rachel and Mar­tin, well these are the lengths we’ll go to in order to bring you this hard-hit­ting inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism.

First up was the tequi­la tast­ing, with own­er Lucas.

Lucas grew up in Cal­i­for­nia, and he and his wife Mar­i­anne were com­pelled to open La Boca Loca after dis­cov­er­ing lots of oth­er Amer­i­can expats work­ing here in the film indus­try all miss­ing Mex­i­can food. He’s a man who knows his tequi­la well (or is good at pre­tend­ing to know his stuff any­way), and told us lots about its his­to­ry, the region­al vari­a­tions, and lots of infor­ma­tion about agave, which is a kind of lily, not a cac­tus (the more you know!). The blue agave that is used in tequi­la takes eight years to grow, and can weigh up to 300 pounds, which is enough for about 60 bot­tles. I man­aged to learn these things even after we start­ed with a shot of deli­cious Her­radu­ra Blan­co. This is noth­ing like the dis­gust­ing Pepe Lopez of my uni­ver­si­ty years. Things got even more tasty as we moved through the tequi­la tast­ing flight.

What you see before you is the Chamu­cos Blan­co (white), which the tast­ing notes describe as “Pine and cit­rus nose, earthy-grassy sweet­ness with mild spice”, the Chamu­cos Reposa­do (rest­ed) — “Oak, earth and hon­ey nose, oak and cit­rus, sweet fruit and smoke. Mild spice.”, and the Chamu­cos Añe­jo (aged)- “Sweet oak nose.Light-bodied Añe­jo with oak, vanil­la, lemon and pep­per spice”.

Giv­en that the tequi­las were made in the same place, from the same agave, it’s amaz­ing how dif­fer­ent they tast­ed as a result of their bar­rel treat­ment. The blan­co was super fresh-tast­ing, while the Ane­jo was like a dessert wine. It was hard to sip them slow­ly since they were so deli­cious, but pair­ing them with the spicy sangri­ta (juice made from orange, toma­to, lime, onions and chilies) slowed me down a lit­tle. That sangri­ta was AMAZING. I can see myself drink­ing litres of it next time I’m hun­gover. If you order a tequi­la flight (which I total­ly rec­om­mend doing — there’s three dif­fer­ent kinds on offer), you’ll get to try the sangri­ta for your­self, and I think they might even start offer­ing it up like a Bloody Mary.

Then it was time for our two groups to switch, so we could perch at the kitchen counter and learn how tor­tillas are made. One of the rea­sons that La Boca Loca was play­ing host is that as well as it being their birth­day, they’ve also start­ed sell­ing their new range of Mex­i­can cook­ing sup­plies so you too can cook more authen­tic Mex­i­can at home. Chefs Chris and Will gave us a show and sniff and touch tour through var­i­ous Mex­i­can spices and dried chilies that they use, and talked us through the process of mix­ing masa (ground corn with the out­side bit removed to make it eas­i­er to digest) into tor­tillas. I’ve seen tor­tilla press­es for sale at On Trays in Petone, but you can also use your hands, or flat­ten them between the pages of a book if you like. La Boca Loca makes its tor­tillas fresh every day, and since they go through around 300 at a time, appar­ent­ly there are armies of Mira­mar teenaged kitchen hands roam­ing around with one arm much big­ger than the oth­er from doing the press­ing.

Fresh tor­tillas are yum­my, espe­cial­ly when try­ing to recov­er from eat­ing too much insane­ly spicy (but tasty) haberero sal­sa. Much more man­age­able was the Sal­sa Verde, deli­cious and green made from tomatil­los. Will told us about how they’re work­ing direct­ly with many of the grow­ers of tomatil­los around New Zealand so they can get con­stant good fresh sup­plies, but that they have to import most of their chilies from Mex­i­co because of cli­mate dif­fer­ences. Lucas also said that he tends to come back with suit­cas­es full of tequi­la when he goes on hol­i­day. I’d like to trav­el with them.

As well as the tor­tillas, Will also cooked up some Mex­i­can chori­zo, which is made with pork meat and spices, and not hung in sausage cas­ings the way Euro­pean chori­zo is made. We talked about moles and oth­er sauces, and it was just a real plea­sure to be able to learn from peo­ple who are clear­ly so pas­sion­ate about what they do. Thanks for hav­ing us!

I’ve always loved the food at La Boca Loca, and even though I now have the means to make some of the food at home,  I know I need to return as soon as pos­si­ble so I can EAT ALL THE THINGS.  I’ll see you there okay?