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06/17/1999 Archived Entry: "The Fabulous Zarela"

Zarela Martinez is one of those women who is known by one name only. Zarela is enough. If her family name wasn’t on the cover of two cookbooks (and a third coming) most of Zarela’s fans wouldn’t know what that name is. And her Mexican restaurant in midtown Manhattan is so admired, it doesn’t even have her one name outside. Or any name. Now, that started as an accident. But Zarela’s followers found her so quickly, and her reputation grew so widely, that there has never been any need to put a sign outside.

The restaurant doesn’t even look Mexican from the outside. It used to be an English-style wine bar and cafe. She’s painted the half-timbered Elizabethan facade in bright Mexican colors, and she’s strung colorful, lacy Mexican paper cutouts all across the ceiling inside. Maybe that’s not quite all the re-decorating she’s done, but sort of. Both floors of the restaurant are always so filled with people and conviviality that it’s hard even to see all the decorations. Zarela’s restaurant is always like a party.

Fortunately, I am privileged to be Zarela’s friend, so I get invited to the real parties -- at her house nearby. And they are the best parties I go to in my life. Whether it is Sunday dinner for eight to twelve at her big table off the open kitchen, or a huge bash that fills the two public floors of her house and her deep city garden, she puts together interesting mixes of people and serves an abundance of good and really interesting food, not to mention strong Margaritas, and a bar with everything else.

Zarela is always traveling in Mexico, which is much vaster than most Americans imagine, and discovering and absorbing every last bit of culinary culture. At her parties, we are generally eating dishes that she’s worked out enough to present. Eventually, the recipes appear in her books and are used to enliven her restaurant’s menu and catering menus.

In other words, she uses her friends as Guinea pigs. At Zarela’s house, I’ll be one of those any day. And I have been one for her three books -- Food From My Heart, The Food and Life of Oaxaca, and, coming soon,“Zarela’s Veracruz.”

My favorite Zarela story comes from her first days in New York. She hails from El Paso and came here to find work as a chef and consultant, encouraged by her reception as a participant in a huge regional American dinner organized by Craig Claiborne (then of the New York Times) for visiting French chefs. She gave a party to introduce herself to New York’s food world and invited maybe 100 people to her loft-like apartment. As I remember it, after hours of drinking, one of the guests came up to Zarela and, pointing to the open kitchen where Zarela’s mother, Aida, and a few Mexican helpers were cooking up a storm, said, “Zarela, people are getting a little tipsy. Don’t you think it’s time to serve some food?”

“What!” Zarela laughed. “You want to eat, and spoil the party?”

Naturally, no one went hungry into that dark night.

Today, Zarela’s twin sons, Rodrigo and Aaron, are grown and fairly on their own -- Rodrigo is doing graduate studies in political science (I forget where at the moment), and Aaron recently made a splash as a chef in New York. He worked in a Greenwich Village restaurant that served what they called “Gulf Rim” food, which we laugh about now, but at the moment seemed a good umbrella for what Aaron likes to cook. He grew up eating his mother’s Mexican food, of course. And he’s worked with Paul Prudhomme in New Orleans and with some of the country’s young Nuevo Latino chefs. He’s young and developing his own style, but meantime helping mom out with her catering business.

At a party Zarela gave last week, we ate one of the most memorable of her creations -- a giant tamale called Sacahuil. There are two versions of this dish from the state of Veracruz. One is made as a six-foot long roll of corn ... pudding should I call it? ... stuffed with pork and seasonings. The other, from Papanpla, in northern Veracruz, the one we ate, was made in a vast pot lined with banana leaves. It was more than enough for the 50 or so people at the party.

(Now, because Zarela is always exquisitely groomed, glamorous, and sexy -- she came to her own party in a black, lingerie-strapped, clingy thing with a deep band of lace at the hem that could have been a nightgown -- people who are not her friends think she just orders her staff around and doesn’t really cook. Fact is, the woman loves, just as my Iris Carulli does, “playing the peasant.” She spent three days hand-grinding the corn meal for her giant tamale, and she has been known to take a day off from all else just to render lard and make crackling.)

Naturally, there were other dishes on the buffet as well, and small stuffed wheat tortillas passed around. (I think there were some other appetizers passed, but at that point in the party I was too busy talking to be able to notice.) There was also a salad of hearts of palm that people were saying was crabmeat. It must have been the slightly stringy texture and sweetness that made them think so. Zarela tells me she just grinds canned hearts of palm in the food processor with garlic, olive oil, and the whites of scallions. That’s it. In Veracruz one can get fresh green hearts of palm, says Zarela, although the last two years a drought has made them scarce. The dish, she says, reflects the strong Afro-Cuban influence on the food of Veracruz. The Spanish, she told me, imported slaves to Veracruz to work the sugar cane fields, but the Veracruz Africans were the first New World slaves to be freed -- in 1608. She said plantain and yucca are another two ingredients of Veracruz cooking that reflect that past.

A casserole of black beans was another of the dishes at the party that I admired, and Zarela said it was probably the pork rinds that made it so appealing to me (she knows my tastes). The beans are simmered with crackling, then seasoned and given additional texture with pumpkin seeds, chayote, tomato, and jalapenos. I can’t wait to get the recipe from the new book, due out next year from Houghton Mifflin.

I’ve actually had Zarela cater a couple of small parties for me -- when I’ve been too busy to cook and the company was too important to give them spaghetti. I love her duck with “stain the tablecloth” sauce, and the creamy rice; both standard items on her restaurant menu. Now I think I should give a party just so I can serve some food from Veracruz.

If you are interested in seeing what catering services Zarela offers, check out her web-site: zarela.com. You’ll also find there a recipe for Salsa Verde Cruda, the Veracruzan green salsa with avacado that she served at her recent party.

If you are in New York and want to go to her restaurant, it’s at 953 Second Ave., between 50th and 51st Sts.; (212) 644-6740.