Carlos Salgado captivated the world of Mexican food at the time Taco María opened in 2013.
His high -end marriage with Homestyle: Sturgeon Tacos, Flamin 'Hot Chicharrones, Blue Corn Tortillas made by Kernels that imported from Mexico and was ground) seemed more suitable for angels or Mexico City than a Hipster Food Room on Costa Mesa.
The praise came quickly: Times Restaurant of the Year in 2018. Four consecutive Michelin stars. One of the most important American restaurants in Esquire in the 2010. Salgado was the best California finalist for the James Beard awards, the Oscars of the restaurant industry, in June 2023.
A month later, Salgado surprised his fans by closing Taco María.
As your good friend, I have the exclusive of what follows. Is … Wisconsin?
A few months after the closure of the restaurant, Salgado moved to Door's county, his wife's childhood house, Emilie Coulson Salgado, in a movement left by the food scene in southern California, if people knew.
If someone deserved to go to all “Walden”, it was the reflective Salgado. He had worked without stopping for a decade, resisting the pandemic and an Orange County audience that generally got angry when he explained why his space did not serve chips and sauce or had “black lives” stagnant in the patio window. Taco María's lease contract was updated, the location was never the best option and Carlos and Emilie wanted to spend more time with their two young children and their parents while recharging and decided what the following was.
Now, after a free time, they are in the restaurant business again, opening the siren this month in Ephraim, population 345, at an hour and a half from the big closer city, Green Bay.
Wait for everything that made Taco Maria so incredible: a Menu of Prix Fixe, an approach to local products and meat, those fabulous blue corn tortillas that they know as a time portal to Tenochtitlan, except on the banks of Lake Michigan instead outside the 405 highway.
Nothing against the state of Badger, but the idea of a Mexican chef of Salgado caliber that is established in a peninsula that stands out in a large lake is like Shohei Ohtani announcing that he will leave the Dodgers to join a Sunday beer league. Gustavo Dudamel decides that his next concert is not the New York Philharmonic but the whitest regional symphony. Governor Gavin Newsom left his office to direct the public library of Friends of the Sacramento.
About 8% of the population of Wisconsin is Latin, and Door County is 96% white. The scene of Mexican food outside Milwaukee and maybe Racine is still mostly combined with margaritas masses or cartoon burritos in the Chipotle model. Wisconsin is … WisconsinLand of cheese and mockery and brandy Old Fasheds.
“I would go back that [Mexican food] is out of place anywhere In the United States, “Salgado told me on the phone last week.” We are the basis of industry, agriculture and construction of the restaurant and hospitality. I don't need to say all the ways in which we are integrated. “
Surely he shut up there! In addition, I am proud that the next step of him and Emilie is in an isolated place in a state that was by Donald Trump in two of the last three elections. California needs all the ambassadors that we can obtain, especially in places that do not resemble us, and we cannot obtain better ambassadors than them.
Carlos Salgado, former chef and co -owner of Taco María, in an outdoor adventure in Door County, Wisconsin, with their two children in a photo without date. Salgado and his wife, Emilie Coulson Salgado, are opening the siren, a high -end Mexican restaurant in Efraín, Wisconsin.
(Courtesy of the Salgado family)
“In parts of the west media, you mention that you are from California, you inevitably have hateors who want to believe that we leave California because it is a failed state, and try to comply with us about how California is uninhabitable,” said Salgado, 45. “Of course, I don't think so. I have longing pains from my native state every day, especially fruits!”
“I really thought we would live in California forever, and I still consider my people from California,” said Coulson Salgado, 41, in a separate interview. “But this experiment is here [Wisconsin] It turned out to be really good for us and our children. “
The two met in San Francisco in 2008, when Coulson Salgado was working for a non -profit organization of literacy and Salgado was a pastry chef in a high -end restaurant. He returned to his native Orange County in 2011 with the aim of helping with the Cal-Mex restaurant of his immigrant family in Orange.
Instead, he capitalized the fashion of the food truck of the time and opened Taco María. Coulon moved in 2013 to help make the transition from the luxurious lunchbox to a brick and mortar, becoming the general manager of the restaurant and beverage director, roles that will also assume in the siren.
Taco María was a daily miracle, especially given his location of Orange County. Salgado obtained media coverage throughout the country and forced Angels to do the unimaginable: traveling to OC for Mexican food. Their exhortations for people to value Mexican cuisine and the people who do it was essential in an era in which many Americans love the former and detest the latter.
But the routine of directing a restaurant, which I know too well, through my wife, used in the couple. They did not want to be hurried to open a New María Taco, so they decided that a stay in the door county would be fun and also correct.
“Emilie put 15 years with me in California,” said Salgado, and moving to Wisconsin “was something we felt we deserved as a family.”
The Rush restaurant was removed by the forests and fishing in Door County on its river routes while the successful prison business of Macha Macha de Taco María continues; Emilie Moonled as Grant writer. The plan was to return to California at some point in 2024 and return to the restaurant's hamster wheel.
But the more they experienced the slower pace of life in Door County, the more they realized that it would be almost impossible to replicate that in southern California.
“We started Taco María without children,” said Salgado. “This test gave us the opportunity to imagine the type of balance we wanted, and we realized that we had a good opportunity to create it here.”
I asked him if he referred to the cost of living or sclerotic traffic or the lack of affordable homes or any of the other reasons why California renounces when they leave and complain about their movement.
“We are certainly not from California Quitters,” said Salgado? “People talk all the time about making career changes to spend more time with their families, and this is really for now.”
Coulson Salgado said that it has been “wonderful to return to where he grew up” with the eyes of an adult. “Door County has seen California's newcomers in recent years, mostly young families drawn by her immaculate landscapes. She loses the multiculturalism of southern California:” My son will say: 'We go to Pho!' And I have to remind you that we are no longer in Orange County, ”he said with a smile.
Chef Carlos Salgado Scoops cooked organic blue corn in a humid mill to grind tortillas in Taco Maria in Costa Mesa on Tuesday, February 16, 2016.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
She does not frame the opening of the siren in the rural west in Trump's era as a political act. But he mentioned the “terrible” deportation flood that has hit southern California this summer (Wisconsin has been saved so far, “but we are on a maximum alert for it”) as a reason why his presence is important.
“It is not as if we were in an alternative universe here,” he said, “but it could be if you were not paying attention, and that is what scares … but that is why it is more important than ever creating more pockets of joy.”
Her husband promised that California “has not yet seen the last of us”, without giving not time for a return.
In an ideal world, he and Emilie would direct the siren and a restaurant in OC
“I am proudly Mexican American,” said Salgado. “And I will not avoid occupying the space and making brown excellence anywhere.”
