In our series, Place at the Table, we look at diasporic enclaves around the world through their cuisines—and the people who, in trying to recreate a taste of home, have forged exciting food scenes that invite others in.
Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square is home to landmarks like a 17th-century park and the Curtis Institute of Music. It’s also home to Tequilas Casa Mexicana, a 40-year-old family-run restaurant known for contemporary Mexican cuisine and ethically sourced agave spirits served atop white tablecloths. The space itself transports diners to Guadalajara, where the operating family hails from: There are floral green and white floor tiles, handmade plateware made by their cousins back at Ceramica Suro, and a mini water fountain depicting El Santo Niño de Atocha. Many would argue, it’s also responsible for the renaissance sweeping through this city’s Mexican food scene.
Tequilas owner David Suro Piñera has been at the forefront. “The restaurant boom in Philadelphia [in the 90s] coincided with the arrival of the San Mateo Ozolco community from Puebla, who were highly trained in fine dining restaurants in Mexico City,” he says. They came to work at kitchens like Georges Perrier’s Le Bec-Fin [French fine-dining spot] as bus boys and dishwashers, Piñera explains, or line cooks and sous chefs at important restaurant groups. Their tenured hospitality experience paved the way for the city’s ascension as a dining destination, but it’s just recently that the wealth of recipes and culinary techniques those immigrants brought with them have seen the spotlight.
Post-pandemic, many former service workers-turned-first-time restaurateurs have guided The City of Brotherly Love into a kind of golden age of Mexican cuisine, inspired by the regional diversity of Mexico, and that of Philly itself. This has dovetailed with the community’s evolution on the whole: Hispanic and Latino population has nearly tripled in the last 30 years, and immigrants make up 15% of the city’s population, transforming pockets like South Philadelphia from “Puebla-delphia” (nodding to the region from which Mexican immigrants hail) to a rich melting pot where Vietnamese and Italian family-run restaurants sit beside Mexican spots rooted in the cuisines of everywhere from Baja and Guerrero, to Michoaca and Oaxaca. Far from being confined to a single corner of the city, these concepts are sprouting up in Center City, Fishtown, and even the suburbs, expanding Philly’s idea of what Mexican food can be.
“We have more sophisticated and more demanding consumers than we used to have in 1986,” says Suro Piñera. Building trust with customers has allowed his team to experiment with “avant-garde” dishes and move beyond the “chimichanga era”, he says. Tequilas makes a ceviche with locally sourced striped bass, cilantro criollo, avocado puree, and a cold jalapeño pepper broth; at sister cafe and bar La Jefa, a reimagined Caesar salad is stuffed into fried tacos dorados…