A Day At Portland's Best Mexican Restaurant

[Angel] Republica's concept is based on seasonality,

meaning that every week you'll have one dish,

and the next week that dish will be completely gone

because the components have changed.

We wanted to be the best storytellers

about Mexican food and this culture.

That's why we call our servers storytellers.

My job is just to make sure that

that vision is being followed through.

[bright music]

Hola, my name is Angel Medina,

I am the founder and co-owner of Republica.

Come on in.

It's 9 AM on a Thursday,

right about now, I QC some ingredients,

I meet with my chefs,

I make sure things are in place.

As you can see here, this is an open kitchen.

We wanted to do that intentionally because we wanted

to show the people that work behind here.

The other thing you'll notice is

it's an all-electric kitchen,

which some people will be limited by that,

but for us, it gives us precision.

Most of the heat is coming from that element

of the two ovens that you see there.

Our menu changes very often.

We have 13 or 14 different courses just about every night,

which means that, right about now, Chef Lauro's downstairs,

trying out some new ingredients,

some things that he just picked up from the market.

We're gonna try it, follow me.

[bright music]

Down this way.

What's up, chef?

Hey Angel, how are ya?

This is my dear friend, co-owner, Chef Lauro Romero.

How's it going?

You're creating something new, I take it?

Yeah, you didn't get my email? [laughs]

No, I didn't get your, shut up.

What do you got?

So we're gonna roll out with escamoles.

It's a food from central Mexico.

It's essentially ant larvae.

You're basically digging in, bare arms, if you're good.

Yeah.

Going into those holes, pulling out the nest of ants,

taking the larvae.

We gonna do it kind of like with arborio,

some short grain, it's gonna be creamy,

we're gonna put some poblanos in there.

We're gonna make it a paste and a little bit

of the squash blossoms on top,

to just add a little freshness.

And even though this is now called Mexican caviar,

this, 20 years ago, only farmers eat it, you know?

Are these from this morning?

Well, we picked those up in the airport yesterday.

Nice.

So one of my favorite things in the world, chicatanas.

In the first rainy season, in the summer,

in central Mexico, it rains so hard that

everything gets flooded, and these ants come out.

There's about two weeks to harvest them.

In this case, we're actually using them on a tostada,

so we have a fish that is cured with chicatanas

and a little bit of coffee.

Once the dish is final, we put a dome on top of it,

and then we smoke it with the chicatana

and a little bit of apple wood smoke.

There is like the funkiness, there is the earthiness

from it, and then the sweetness of the wood

keeps transporting you to this place

where you're toasting chicatanas, and it's rainy,

so you smell a little bit of earth sweetness,

and that's kind of the idea behind this.

These are things that we want to have on the menu,

that we want to pay the respect to the cuisine

in bringing these things, it's not cheap.

It's honestly a pain in the ass to go to the airport

every time 'cause they don't get delivered.

And the airport's a good hour trip.

Honestly, fruit and vegetables taste

a lot different when they're in season.

This is why we really focus on sustainability here.

Our menu changes constantly based on ingredients

that are popping up.

The one thing that doesn't change, however,

is the corn for masa.

We have our nixtamalization program that happens

right about now, right at 11, down the street

at our other restaurant, so follow me.

You ready?

I'll meet you there in a second.

I gotta put this away.

Okay.

We opened Fondita in May of this year, 2022.

Again, continuing to focus on those things

that use corn, right?

So right now it's 11:00 AM.

We already have some stuff nixtamalizing.

For us, corn, it's such an important piece of everything

that we do, in our entire tortillas, memelas,

and anything that's corn-based is made outta here.

Nixtamalization, the process itself, is a three-day process,

usually, essentially what it does is

it breaks down the corn.

In here, you have an alkaline solution.

The alkaline will help to essentially break it all down

and get you to a texture where it's soft enough.

As you can see, she's already making

those tortillas for us right now.

This is something that we do for everybody,

everything is made on the spot, as you order it.

You have three types of masa here,

a blue corn, a yellow corn, and a white corn.

This is all the corn that comes in from Mexico

that we nixtamalize in-house.

So Lauro just got here, we're gonna continue

with the process.

If you break it down, you'll see that it

starts starting to gelatinize.

It should look a little bit like, almost like al dente,

right, you have like a little starch in the middle,

but everything else is kind of gelatinized.

And that helps with elasticity of the masa,

that's what's gonna make it stick together.

So I'm gonna rinse it off a little bit,

and then we gonna put it into the molino.

This comes from Oaxaca specifically.

So the next step, we're gonna grind it.

It's gonna get loud.

[molino grinds]

In here, you have two big volcanic stones.

The friction of it grinds it, so the corn itself,

as you see there, falls in between, breaking it down.

It's soft enough because of the nixtamalization.

Essentially, what we're doing is we're rolling it up,

reintegrating it all together, so that eventually

you get this thing that most people are familiar with.

Something like this, which is masa.

The assembly line goes masa, press, and then here.

Oh, that's good.

This is our quesadilla.

Looks a little different than

the quesadillas you're used to.

Four types of corn, just to highlight the beauty of the corn

that we bring from Mexico.

All nixtamalized at different stages,

because it's so different.

You have different type of sweetness,

you have a different type of saltiness to it.

The beauty of it is that the texture is all the same,

which is the most important piece.

And what states are represented?

So you got Oaxaca, Tlaxcala in here,

and two Estado de Mexico with this, too.

Woo hoo hoo ho hoo, queso or quesillo, as we know it.

Oh, that's so good. Wow.

It's food that belonged to the Toltecs and Olmecs

and Zapotecs and Mayans, and we're able to give you

different varieties and even different techniques

that we still use in modern-day Mexican cuisine.

It's 12 o'clock, I gotta get back to Republica,

which is just about three blocks away.

I'm meeting with Don Miguel, I'll see you there.

Five o'clock somewhere, that's right.

I'm meeting here with Maestro Miguel,

we're gonna taste some wines,

we're gonna drink some mezcal.

He's one of the few Mexican-born and -raised

somme's in this country.

What do you have today, Miguel?

We're gonna start with wine,

and we're gonna then go to some agaves.

Wines here is Mexican, BIPOC, female, queer,

minority-driven.

Not a lot of people know that Queretaro can make wines,

not a lot of people know Mexico can make wines.

But in Mexico we have 32 states,

out of those, 14 already make wine.

So now we're going to start with Vinos Barrigon.

By the way, did you see how much he poured me?

This is my first, this is, it's still noon.

Part of the commitment that we have over here.

[Angel laughs]

We are using this tonight with the chicatana.

This matches the texture of it, and the high acid help us

clean the palette while invites you to get another sip

and another bite, hopefully.

This stuff is probably the only time that you're

gonna find this here in the US, and for us,

it's been a goal bringing wines from not

just the Baja region, but also focusing on places

like Queretaro, Guanajuato.

Mexico is actually it's the first place

where grapes were planted in the Americas, correct?

Yeah. Yeah.

So it's been around for almost 500 years.

Wine was born in what you know these days as Mexico,

back in the day Nueva España,

and for every ten Native American slave humans

that you had on your vicinity or your territory,

you had to plant one grapevine.

Pretty knowledgeable human being here.

We're gonna try some mezcal.

So now a new batch of Derrumbes Salmiana.

It's super spicy as you can see, a little bit

of that green bell pepper.

Quite rich, definitely.

It often tastes, when you open it,

it smells like a can of chiles, and then when you try it,

it tastes like a can of bell peppers.

So this is a method that I use sometimes when I have to

drink a lot or taste a lot of different spirits,

dipping your pinkie, or any kind of finger,

and then rubbing it against your skin.

It helps the alcohol evaporate.

There's an evolution, and it's quite nice to see

how it changes from that first to the second

and the third nose.

Okay y'all, it's 1:30 PM, I'm gonna take this last sip,

and I gotta get over to the other side

and meet with our executive pastry chef.

[bright music]

[Olivia] Okay, so I have one-

Wait, hold on, can I tell the people who you are first?

Oh sorry, yeah.

I'm just kidding.

I was excited about desserts.

Here with me is Chef Olivia.

Hi! What are we doing?

Okay, so I have one dessert that I think is

pretty much ready to go and has already gone

through other vetting. Okay.

So I will plate that up for you,

the other one is in its very first stages.

So I'll do the strawberry one first.

It's gonna be our dulce de leche coconut candied peanuts.

One of the staple crops in Mexico, one of the oldest.

Kind of fluffy light coconut cake.

It is gonna be all plant-based.

It's gonna keep it really nice and light for summer.

Strawberries, then I'm going to be using

something called nata de coco.

So then a little serrano, candied, for some heat.

My final element is a coconut and avocado sorbet.

So one of the hardest challenges here,

the work done by Chef Olivia, mostly because one,

you're not from this culture, so it takes a lot more effort

to go out there, to research these things,

and figure out whether or not they're historically connected

to what we're trying to present here.

The other is that these are original desserts, you know,

it's pretty easy to take a tiramisu,

or a tres leches cake, and modify it,

and add some sort of component that's trending.

How did you get it so fluffy without, you said it's vegan?

I mean, it has baking powder, which makes it fluffy,

but the food in what is now Mexico was almost

entirely vegan once upon a time.

Thoughts? It's great.

It's ready to go.

All right, this definitely has to go on the menu, for sure.

So the next one, it's a little more in its baby stages,

but it is gonna be a beet and cocoa butter atole.

So atole is a masa-based drink.

It has been drunk since the Aztecs.

We have some Oregon peaches that are

in the beginning of season, so some candied walnuts.

Mexico's the fifth-highest producer of walnuts.

I just have some sourdough bread for a bit of tang

and a little bit of texture.

So then just a bit of a sourdough ice cream.

Ready?

Oh no, it needs lime zest. [gasps]

Lime zest?

Very important.

So adds a little brightness,

a little bit of something unexpected.

You're gonna need a knife.

It's messy.

It's supposed to be messy.

Oh.

Is it good?

No, I'm just kidding, it's great.

Fantastic.

First thing, the atole's fantastic, but it's warm.

It's quite a contrast between the ice cream and the atole.

The walnuts are great but they're overpowering,

because they're so big.

So there's no way to really break those up.

I don't know if it's ready for tonight,

but it's pretty fantastic.

Okay, we'll keep the other one on until,

shoot for Monday. Okay.

It's 3:00 PM, and our front of house staff

is starting to arrive.

We still have to print menus, and then we gotta talk

about these dishes, we got a few dishes, as you've seen

from the day, that we have to add and a lot of education

that we have to go through, so I'm gonna take this with me.

Chef, thank you.

Just printing the last one.

Okay, we're good.

Probably should have spell-checked before I printed,

but that's okay.

So we're about to do our lineup, but before I do that,

I'm gonna go home and change,

so that I look professional for y'all.

[upbeat music]

[Angel] Anything else, are you good?

[speaking Spanish]

[upbeat music]

Let's go, 4:30 and it's our lineup time.

This is when we gather everybody and we do one last,

well, one last check on everything

that we're supposed to know by five o'clock today.

So come on over here.

All right team, get over here, everybody.

And I hope you're taking notes.

At five o'clock, A1, no shrimp, no cheese.

We have two new dishes today, arroz verde with escamoles.

This is ant larvae.

[Juan] You know, really emphasize the fact that, you know,

escamoles are super important to the gastronomy in Mexico.

That, along with every insect that you see up here,

you know.

Ten minutes to go time, everybody have a great service.

People are showing up, let's go.

[upbeat music]

[Angel] This dish comes from Chef Lalo.

He grew up in poverty.

His mom would make him something called atun.

Our chicatana tostada, it's Kampachi.

We've cured it in coffee, as well as the chicatana ants.

Aguachile itself translates directly to

water chile in Spanish.

We use the smoke to bring about the scent

after a heavy rainfall, as that's when the chicatana ants

are known to come outta the asphalt.

Alright y'all, things are starting to get hot in here,

and people are starting to show up.

As much as we love to have you here,

it's time for you to go.

Thank you for joining us.

Adios.