‘Mexican culture is corn.’ A temple of masa opens in L.A.
- Komal at Mercado La Paloma joins an intimate group of masa makers who emphasize the wonders of Mexico’s ancestral corn varieties.
- Fátima Júarez and her staff nixtamalize their corn on site for 12 to 14 hours.
Some of the city’s freshest tortillas are bubbling up on the planchas of Komal in Historic South-Central, arriving just-blistered and blue, yellow or white in color. The highly anticipated molino and restaurant from a Holbox and Damian alumna, is now open in Mercado La Paloma for freshly ground masa, a range of antojitos and, eventually, a tasting menu.
“I love my culture, and the base for Mexican culture is corn,” said Komal founder Fátima Júarez.
Júarez oversees one of the region’s only craft molinos, nixtamalizing and grinding heritage-breed corn sourced from small farmers across Mexico. She’s part of an intimate group of tortilla makers that includes the likes of Tehachapi Heritage Grain Project and Kernel of Truth’s Ricardo Ortega and Omar Ahmed.
At her new restaurant stall in the famous food hall, she and her husband, Conrado Rivera, offer the masa by the pound or as tortillas, or in antojitos reminiscent of her childhood spent in Oaxaca and upbringing in Mexico City. Júarez grew up cooking with her mother and grandmother at their family’s restaurant, and still remembers playing with fresh masa as a child.
There are roughly 60 unique varieties of corn in Mexico, and at Komal she offers a few of them: yellow bolita from Oaxaca, red Cónico from the state of Mexico, and blue Chalqueño, also from the state of Mexico; future batches of corn will vary, depending on availability from farmers. Komal sources its heritage corn via import company Tamoa, which works directly with small farms and provides ethical compensation.
Júarez and Rivera moved to L.A. from Mexico City in 2016, when they both found work at Chichén Itzá: her on prep and dishwashing, him as a server and running the front of house, helping award-winning chef Gilberto Cetina run his Yucatecán food stall in the same market where Komal now resides.
When Cetina launched Holbox in a stall nearby, Júarez and Rivera joined him. She describes the chef as both her mentor and her big brother. After a short time in the new space Cetina approached her about her culinary goals, and she told him that it was simple: She wanted to work with corn. He encouraged her, and the masa offerings at Holbox benefited.
“He always supported me,” Júarez said. “If I made something bad, he always said, ‘Don’t worry, you got it.’ It’s very emotional for me because I don’t have family here in L.A., and the team for Holbox, they are my family.”
The family connection extends far beyond support and into her masa’s flavor.
Many employees in Mercado La Paloma miss their families, having come to Los Angeles to build a new life but left many behind. Komal and its masa, Júarez said, have helped provide comfort and memories of their loved ones and former homes.
“Here in Mercado, we are immigrants,” she said. “When I grind the corn in the molino the people say, ‘I remember Mexico,’ ‘I remember Guatemala.’ The people smell the corn and they remember their family, they remember their country — all of it. They always give me advice, give me support, and this project is for everyone.”
She’d missed the flavors of this corn herself. When she moved to L.A. nearly a decade ago, despite the wealth of excellent Mexican restaurants, Júarez found the taste of the corn lacking. After years of searching for enchiladas reminiscent of her mother’s homemade-tortilla version, or the antojitos found on street corners throughout Oaxaca and Mexico City, she decided to build her own business, branching off from Cetina’s.
Komal’s wholesale arm, which began a year and a half ago, supplies Holbox, El Matatan in Orange and chef Carlos Gaytan’s three restaurants in Downtown Disney, among others. Each week she makes between 2,500 and 3,000 pounds of masa for her restaurant clients, and while she was content to remain a wholesale operation, when a stall opened up in the food hall earlier this year, she and Rivera jumped at the chance to turn Komal into a restaurant.
They hand-laid Komal’s tiles, splayed out in varying shades of yellow to replicate kernels of corn. They plan to build a small eight-seat counter at the front of the stand.
Júarez and her all-women kitchen arrive around 4 a.m. to clean the corn, which has been nixtamalized on site between 12 and 14 hours. They then grind it into masa, a process that can vary by variety. The masa is sold by the pound, or as tortillas or as the fried, order-ahead tostadas raspadas.
It also forms the base of the small menu of antojitos, where ovular, griddled tlacoyos stuffed with ayocote beans get crowned with nopales and queso fresco, or where thin, pliant quesadillas ooze Oaxacan cheese and fillings such as squash blossoms, oyster mushrooms or a fresh chorizo made by a team member from neighboring food stall Chichén Itzá. The Taco Sonia, named for her favorite taquera in Mexico City, gets piled with beef shoulder, chorizo and potatoes or nopales. Plump, cheese-stuffed plantain balls float in a rich house-made Oaxacan mole negro. Thick wedges of pan de calabaza, studded with bits of zucchini, can come topped with dollops of cream.
Eventually Júarez and Rivera hope to expand not only their hours of operation but their menu: In a few months they expect to debut a weekly tasting menu where crickets, ants and other ingredients less-utilized in the U.S. might be found topping variations of her masa.
“In those tasting dinners she’s gonna explore all the things that can’t be put on a daily menu,” Rivera said. Those dinners could even see collaborative dishes between Júarez and her Mercado La Paloma neighbor and mentor, Cetina.
“Now that we have our space,” Rivera added, “we welcome everybody.”
Komal is open Wednesday to Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 3655 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles.
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