Fusion foods are a banal fact of life in our modern world. As supply chains – even despite a few creaks and creases – allow chefs and even laycooks to combine ingredients from all over the globe, collaborative creations are available anywhere and everywhere. Banh mi is bountiful; the simple application of burger buns Americanise an unholy amount of foods.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the cities of the world, where flavour combinations reflect diverse populations, cultures dine and intertwine, and pop-ups can risk it all by making burger buns out of noodles or pizza-fying sushi without the daunting prospect of having an established restaurant to make a success of.
All of this to say that it is hard to find a combination that inspires real shock, intrigue or even dread.
But if there’s anything that the creators of Los Mochis were up for when they created their original Notting Hill restaurant and a subsequent central London location, it was a challenge.
The concept of fusing Mexican and Japanese cuisine feels basely wrong.
Japanese cuisine is often pared-back and precise. Ginger and wasabi are weaponised to cut through dour tones of soy. Mexican food is a full-hearted celebration of flavour, charcoal-cooked meats and spice offset with a fresh lime-y acidity.
The two together could only cancel each other out. Soy can only arrest the punch of a well-formed taco. The tar-like viscosity of Oaxaca’s pride and joy, the dark sauce called molé, would make short work of ginger.
The quintessential dining experience is different, too. One is a family affair filled with recipes often protected and passed by word of mouth, the other a personal dining culture, revelling in servings of simplicity.
Surprisingly, Markus Thesleff, the founder and CEO of Los Mochis, is upfront about this. “It’s like painting with two different brushes,” he tells me, before gesturing to his executive head chef, Leonard Tanyag, “but he found a way to combine them”.
There is a spectre haunting peoples’ perceptions of Mexican food – and that spectre is Taco Bell. But people are waking up to authentic post-Tex Mex cuisine. “There’s a real interest in Mexican food, but not much of a knowledge about it,” Michelle of Stoke Newington taco stop Sonora Taqueria tells me. The shop brings the classics of northern Mexico, from carne asada to nopales.
Michelle started her shop because she missed the food of her home and makes a sharp distinction between the low-end and high-end. “Tacos are not fancy. They are meant to be affordable. You eat them on the side of the street,” Michelle tells me. So people are craving a real Mexican experience, but can a fusion provide that?
Adversely, Japanese cuisine has been a prolific global delicacy for a while now. The sushi phenomenon rode into the global consciousness on the back of the 00s, reflecting the technological age with a focus on precision cuts and aesthetic beauty.
“For me, Japanese food is about simplicity and fresh ingredients,” Tanyag tells me. His journey began in Kofu, a small Japanese town where he got a start in an Izakaya (a more laidback sushi restaurant). “There, the chef never used suppliers. You bought it from the market, and then you used it.”
He’s brought this dedication with him to London. It’s on full display at Los Mochis, TENrei: The Art of Tuna Ceremony every second Tuesday of the month, featuring a bluefin responsibly and sustainably sourced from Balfegó. This event, Thesleff passionately tells me, strives to communicate the true beauty of the fish, often misunderstood, but never denied upon tasting.
The pride and joy of Thesleff and Tanyag’s fusion achievements is its tasting menu taken in their newly built London City establishment. The place itself feels transplanted straight from a high-rise establishment in Monterrey. Typical suited city chatter and low lighting indicate that this will be a classic “foreign cuisine in a city” experience. Small bites and stock market talk. But it’s that promise of fusion that keeps the intrigue alive.
The Latin element floods the decor, soft-coloured but strikingly impressive works from Mexico City-based artist Telleache. Dotted around the space are unfortunate instances of ofrendas (Day of the Dead shrines) emblazoned with the restaurant’s name and adorned with colourful skulls. These kinds of totems to the globalised understanding of Mexico are not uncommon, but their presence – not only giving permanence to something traditionally temporary – is an unfortunate reminder that what we will taste is a facsimile of the idolised “real thing”.
With all this Mexico-loaded decor, one wonders: how will the Japanese elements find their way in? The first stage of the tasting menu is salmon tiradito, featuring precise cuts of the fish sporting a bright wasabi salsa. A firmly Japanese eating experience with palpitations of bold Mexican flavour worked into the tendons of the perfect cut.
In this dish and the subsequent seabass ceviche with shiso-truffle soy, we see head chef Tanyag’s commitment to prestige. The cuts of the latter plate are buoyant to bite, almost like fresh fruit. The spice and umami do seem to embrace for a time, but they aren’t falling into each other in a perfect fusion yet, more orbiting in the hopes of coalescence.
The preparation for such dishes is painstaking and purposeful, a perfect example of Los Mochis’ love of a challenge. A wholehearted commitment to nut-free and gluten-free dishes means that everything – including the sauces and tamari-based soy elements – is made from scratch. “There was a lot of experimenting,” Tanyag tells me – Thesleff mentions a face-off between him and 32 nigiri in the testing stage. “But before we decided, we made sure we could deliver.” This base-level alchemy provides him with complete control over the dishes.
The fruits of all these challenges and experimentation are served in a predictable but welcome fashion, in the form of maki and tacos. For all the pomp and circumstance, the dishes sit there with an unassuming, rudimentary look. No sushi rolls made of totopos. No soy-drenched chilaquiles.
This simplicity is ultimately a deceit. Here is our fusion.
The cucumber maki is the simplest of dishes. “There’s nowhere to hide on that plate,” Thesleff admits. But a beautifully light jalapeno salsa verde covers the perfectly rolled morsels. The separation of the cuisines is almost insulting to the eye – one served drenched with the other, but they come together in the mouth.
The yakiniku taco has that dark, smokey taste of Mexican meat, but it ties off with a beautiful umami dive courtesy of a soy-sesame marinade. The moment where one taste becomes the other is undetectable and this is as much about where the fusion is hiding as much as it is the obvious collaborative nature of the meat. “There is pickled orange and ginger at the bottom of that taco; you’re getting hit from all sides,” Thesleff says with an enthusiasm that would have you think he’s just eaten one himself.
The love and appreciation for both cuisines is evident. There is nous behind what ostensibly feels like novelty.
Far away from the bustle of their newer central digs though, hiding upstairs from the original restaurant in Notting Hill is something spectacular.
A delightful omakase journey in 15 small courses, served directly by the chef, each one brimming with creativity and poise. The fusion here isn’t the main event; it’s more of a “Japanese tradition with an innovative Mexican twist”.
Truly, if Los Mochis’ diners delight in the pearls of an unseen, talented chef’s creation, Juno Omakase allows you to watch the beauty being constructed, to ask questions and to learn more. And this is now available in their central location with the opening of Luna Omakase, a chef’s table situated within London City Los Mochis.
It’s a joy to behold these creations and such talented chefs in a more personal setting. As the courses persist, a flourish of gusano (worm) salt here and the transmutation of pickled ginger to jicama (Mexican root vegetable) reiterate their understanding of both cuisines.
The word omakase means “I’ll leave it up to you”, and feels pertinent for the growing cluster of restaurants in general. If you had to trust anyone with the challenge of Japanese-Mexican fusion, it’s these people.