dinner on sunday was awesome! all of the culinary stars aligned themselves to create an extraordinary evening that night! 

we started out with everyone meeting at 7pm and greeted our guests with a cocktail to loosen up just a bit. We made a manzana & pear margarita with aleppo pepper and s&s rim. Fortunately, it was enough to convince non-tequila drinkers to be swayed the other way with it's surprising smoothness. I am hard to please when it comes to margaritas, since I hate the sour mix that 95% of people use when making margaritas and the horrible tequila that is often used. It is so simple to use a more fresh approach with lime and homemade simple (which is one to one water and sugar) and a good 100% blue agave tequila. So, for the apple part of our margarita we added a mexican soda called sidral mundet, which is an apple flavored soda dating back to 1900! And for a slight pear note we added goya brand pear nectar. I am a huge believer in semi homemade, I like the idea of starting with a familiar item, and then tweaking it by adding your own special touches! We also had roasted cumin corn cups with sauteed hongo and coconut garnished with fresh chopped cilantro as a pairing to the "greet and meet" cocktail.

we decided after last dinner to do certain courses "family-style" in order to provoke interaction between guest and create a feeling of "sharing". that being said, we also did not want to create a hazardous environment, so the first course of piping-hot tortilla soup was served individually! For the recipe we used vegetable stock as the base, and added a puree of rice to thicken the broth, and added that truly "tortilla-soup" flavor with roasted poblano peppers and cumin with dashes of lime juice and fresh avocado. we baked fresh corn tortilla strips and added them on top of the soup for a texture balance and flavor additive to the soup. we decided to add the chicken (which was roasted with simple salt and pepper) underneath the tortilla strips vs cooking it into the soup itself so that it still retained it's nice poultry flavor vs taking on all the spices that the soup was cooked in. We believe it creates a more "layered" taste to the soup instead of a one-dimensional flavor profile.

We then switched to "family-style" mode with our winter inspired tacos! we came up with the idea after naming off flavors that we wanted to try together, and then thought of a medium for them to be used in, and all of a sudden we thought... TACOS! it is a classic fave! so the tacos consisted of cubed roasted butternut squash topped off with roasted apples and bacon and as the finishing note to be a play on lime and cilantro (typical mexican last minute squeeze-on-before-first-bite situation) we added a dash of chimichurri. it added the same aspect, but with a twist, and pleasing to the eyes as well! 

The 3rd course was also a play on seasonal items, and it was a turkey milanesa with mixed greens tossed in a chili-orange vinaigrette! So, typically when you order milanesa at a mexican restaurant it is chicken or beef, not at all having the option of turkey. So, we thought it would be a great way to add seasonal with traditional. the turkey was dry rubbed and then left to brine for over 24 hours! the turkey was then tenderized and coated with panko instead of typical bread crumbs, thus allowing the coating to be more crisp! We then fried the turkey crusted with panko, and then finished them off in the oven, which also allowed the finished product to be less of a greasy mess. The dish was finished off with patatas bravas, which are spiced potatoes in paprika!

lastly we have the fourth course which was the mexican bread pudding made with white raisins, cinnamon and a bit of piloncillo and garnished with semi-sweet chocolate! it was a hit!

for the closing part of our dinner we like to invite local talent to entertain our unexpecting guests, and in this case it was stephen leonard! He is currently on an album for the National Equality March cd, and has his own cd which is about to be released this week! needless to say, everyone that was in attendance was blown away by this talented artists' voice ad his stunning ability to sound so clear and precise with just him and a guitar, sans any electrical equipment! I want him for every dinner!

To finish off the entire evening of food, and entertainment, we all played a couple of rounds of loteria, which is mexican bingo, that proved itself to be as amazing to play now than it was when i was 7 years old. The evening was wrapped up as tight as a tamale and it was by far, an unforgettable and amazing evening. So a huge, huge thank you to patrick powers from pns explosion podcast, chef radhika, and chef rafael and chef li as well as jen and steven for coming out to the dinner! yo soy is always full of delicious surprises and each one of you guys helped make the evening special! Also a huge, huge thank you to josie flores for helping us with this event! without you this dinner would not have gone as smooth as our margaritas were!

So, for the ones who did not get to make it to this one, be on the look out for the january yo soy dinner, and email us straight away so that you may reserve your seat now!

xoxo,

Mikey + Brian