Due to popular demand! Welcome to L.A. TACO's new travel column, 'Hungry For Mexico,' where we will bring you TACO-approved spots to eat and drink at while traveling to Mexico.
Some details are now hazy, but Mexico City chef Eduardo “Edo” Ramirez Nakatani can tell you when he first fell in love with food—it was on a family visit to Los Angeles. He was eight or nine years old, in 1978 or 1979, and it happened at a Thai restaurant, near West Covina, where his older sister had moved to start her career as a dentist. He tried larb for the first time, and when stuffing those lettuce wraps into his mouth, “I realized I really loved to eat.” He calls the moment his “revelation.”
As a teen in Mexico City, Nakatani’s early attempts at cooking often focused on trying to recreate that L.A. larb. Asian ingredients were hard to come by then, and he never quite nailed it. But in the process of trying, he became more conscious that what his family was doing in their home–combining Mexican and Asian ingredients and cooking techniques–was a necessity that led to invention.
Today, Edo Nakatani (who uses his mother’s maiden name professionally) is an established Mexico City chef, whose new restaurant, Fideo Gordo, is inspired by the way his family ate and lived. Fideo Gordo is an udon-ya, an udon noodle shop. But its five udon preparations reflect Nakatani’s family practice of using what was present to elevate whatever they were eating. The Obi Udon de Cordero, uses a consomé de barbacoa soup base with shredded deshebrada lamb, wide noodles, serrano chiles, and coriander. The vegetable udon combines a Mexican mushroom broth, soy milk, kombu, bok choy, miso, and Nakatani’s own salsa de chile morita. The more conventionally Japanese udon bowls—tempura, sesame, and clam—are accompanied by a dish of limes and sliced chiles, which was how the Nakatanis ate at home.