At the east end of The Beach, a new Mexican restaurant called Xola has opened on the down-low. It has no listed phone number, no website, no Facebook page, no Yelp reviews and it has been open for almost a month; in the age of the insta-review, this lack of an online footprint is nearly unheard of.
Owner and chef Mali Fernandez isn’t a social media savant trying to whip Hogtown foodies into an e-frenzy by being mysterious. She’s simply passionate about what she does, and she wants to make sure that everything is just right IRL before tackling the web.
Currently, Xola is in soft-launch mode as Fernandez finishes decorating her 17-seat restaurant — though she’s hardly had time to think about which paintings she wants because she’s been swamped with customers. Xola may be a well-kept secret by Internet standards, but Beach residents have been swarming the joint for brunch, lunch and dinner. At night, there are lineups that snake out the door as locals wait to snatch one of the seven tables in the bijou, jewel-toned room.
Seven years ago, Fernandez left her native Mexico and moved north to Toronto. When she first got here she was disheartened by the lack of authentic Mexican food — and Old El Paso wasn’t cutting it. She did her best to remedy the situation by cooking at Embrujo Flamenco and Pachuco (which she ran with her sisters), but when those restaurants closed, she decided it was time to embark on her own culinary project.
Xola — named after a subway station in Mexico City — serves Mexican favourites from across the nation, and even a few dishes from California, like Baja-style fish tacos ($15 for three). Fernandez is a keen locavore and is sourcing as much as possible from Ontario. Even the corn used to make the tamales is grown and ground locally. She uses hormone- and antibiotic-free meat from Royal Beef and tries to use as much in-season Ontario produce as possible. One exception is the huitlacoche (a type of fungus that grows on corn), which she imports. She uses the truffle-like fungus in a gordita ($10 for three) and with goat cheese in an omelette ($12.50).
Even though Fernandez’s goal is to channel traditional Mexican flavours, she’s keen to put her own contemporary spin on dishes like alitas (chicken wings), which are marinated in hibiscus, blackberry, mango, chile de árbol and chipotle ($10). For the adobo tacos ($15), she gussies up ancho and guajillo chilli-braised beef with in-season fruit like pears and peaches.
Each taco on the menu is paired with a complementary salsa, made, of course, in-house. The rainbow of salsa options includes familiar variants such as verde and roja, but also more exotic types like peanut salsa and chile de árbol salsa.
While some of the dishes are pretty out-there, like blue cheese and walnut guac ($9), others are more traditional. The cochinita pibil ($15) is cooked in the Yucatán style — it’s baked in a spiced banana leaf for five hours.
By Caroline Aksich
Published: August 22, 2013
