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?