A Look at Rick Bayless’s New Taco-Tasting Menu Inspired by Mexico City

Chicago is in the midst of a new age of taco-tasting menus, allowing chefs to embrace masa and use fresh tortillas as the vessels for pretty much whatever they want. Cariño in Uptown offers a late-night menu, and Taqueria Chingón in Bucktown throws the occasional pop-up. In Wicker Park, Rishi Kumar, a chef who worked with Rick Bayless at his downtown restaurants, has hosted the occasional taco feast at the Coach House as Kumar and chef Zubair Mohajir prepare to open Mirra, their Mexican and Indian restaurant in Bucktown.

Before Cariño chef Norman Fenton opened his Uptown restaurant, he pledged to give back to the community. When it debuted, Cariño’s late-night taco dinner was billed as a more accessible way into the restaurant, one that charges $210 for its regular tasting menu; the eight-course taco omakase is $125. But in June, Cariño aimed the idea toward raising money for charity, and as a way — as Fenton tells Eater — “to continue providing a multi-dynamic experience in our small venue.” Fenton brought in a former colleague at Schwa, Wilson Bauer, the chef and owner at Flour Power in West Town. The two collaborated on the inaugural Tacos With Friends, a $250 per person dinner to benefit Latinos Progresando. Fenton has since worked with Kimski’s Won Kim, Esme’s Jenner Tomaska, and has a September 22 date with Sangtae Park of Bonyeon and Omakase Yume.

As Chicago chefs, like Fenton, embraced this format, Bayless, one of the most influential chefs in America, remained curious but largely on the sidelines: “That was one of the biggest struggles for me because I didn’t want it to look like we were just jumping on a trend,” Bayless says.

But Bayless has a change of heart. In mid-July, Topolobampo, for the first time, began offering a $165 to $185 taco-tasting menu, taking inspiration from 13 taquerias and street food vendors that Bayless and his team visited during a trip earlier this year to Mexico — four are listed on Eater’s Best Taquerias in Mexico City. Now through Saturday, September 7, Topolo offers a menu called, “Mexico City: Taco Capital of the World.”

Bayless called the visit “a legendary day for us.” The chef has an apartment in Mexico City and has arranged taco crawls for his staff with about four stops. This crawl was longer as they spent about 12 hours through CDMX’s traffic and tried more than 35 specialties. All 13 taquerias that inspired Topolo are listed with logos in art touting the new menu, and Bayless hopes he can encourage Chicagoans to visit them in Mexico. They sampled items like taco campechanos made with marrow roasted by a vendor who tossed bones directly into a charcoal fire.

After returning home, Bayless and the team — led by chef de cuisine Meagan O’Connor — held several brainstorming sessions. The bone marrow is the showstopper using Creekstone Farms brisket. It’s accompanied by thinly sliced Japanese A5 wagyu and chorizo. Guests scoop out the “marrow” and make their own tacos. There’s even a vegetarian option with eggplant.

O’Connor has visited Mexico more than 20 times with Bayless. She says it’s not challenging sourcing ingredients. While Mexico City inspired the menu, Chicago’s seasonal produce and items like Japanese turnips grown on the restaurant’s rooftop garden, make the menu unique.

“We realized we were seeing so many different styles of tacos that we don’t really see in Chicago that much or in the United States that much,” O’Connor says. “So we decided, let’s do this menu to kind of showcase that a taco might not necessarily be what you think of as a plated taco.”

Pastry chef Jennifer Enyart, who left the Bayless empire with husband Brian to open Dos Urban in Logan Square, has returned. She’s created dessert tacos to end the meal. One is based on al pastor — it’s a gringos taco wrapped in a flour tortilla with melted cheese and roasted jackfruit. It’s a combo between a cheese and traditional dessert course, O’Connor says. Another dish is based on tacos Dorados with a crispy shell made of chocolate and mesquite bean flour and filled with a chocolate semifreddo.

Though Bayless is proud of what his team accomplished, he isn’t the only one with apprehension about taco-tasting menus. When Danny Espinoza and Jhonna Ruiz first saw the Northwest Side space that would become Santa Mesa Tamaleria, they saw a countertop with stools, ideal for a taco-tasting menu. Though tempting, the couple opted against the move, though they’ll eventually offer special dinner pop-ups in the future.

Some chefs use the word “omakase,” a Japanese term normally applied to sushi to describe their offerings. Customers enjoying an omakase are at the mercy of the “chef’s whim,” meaning the menu can change without warning depending on the chef’s mood. But there’s no direct connection with Japanese culture which has alienated some chefs from using the term. In the world of fine dining, some remain convinced that Mexican food is not worth higher prices. Japanese omakase has no such problem and there’s even a bro culture of diners who get a rush in buying expensive sushi. Opponents reason that Mexican food doesn’t need the Japanese connection. Moles are complex and labor-intensive. They are worthy of big spending without being called an omakase.

“I didn’t want that taco omakase thing to come, and neither did I want the guests in Topolo to say, well, ‘it’s not Topolo-worthy, because it’s just a bunch of tacos,’” Bayless says. “And so we worked very hard — I was really pushing everybody constantly to make this — these tacos — through the lens of what we do in Topolo. So they are very inspired by people and places, but at the same time, they’re very much our thing.”

Mexico City: Taco Capital of the World at Topolobampo, now through September 7, tickets via Tock