Behind the Counter: Conversación del Maíz

I’ll be honest: I thought I knew corn. I’ve eaten my way through enough taquerias, tasting menus, and tortillerias to feel reasonably confident about the subject. Then I started learning about nixtamalization (the ancient Mesoamerican process of transforming dried corn through an alkaline soak) and realized I didn’t know anything. Once I understood what nixtamalization actually does to corn and what it means for the masa in that tortilla you’re eating, I had to go straight to the source.

That led me to three chefs doing some of the most serious work with corn right now. Chef Alam Méndez, Chef José Contreras  & Chef Luis Martínez.  Alam Méndez grew up in his mother’s kitchen, and not just any mother: Celia Florián of Las Quince Letras, one of Oaxaca’s most celebrated cooks. That foundation took him through Michelin-starred kitchens in Spain, the IKA Culinary Olympics, and eventually to Washington, D.C., where he co-founded Apapacho Taquería and Marea by Apapacho. He grinds his corn in-house every single day, and it shows.

Chef José Contreras is a James Beard Semifinalist and the owner of Amelia’s in Tucson, a restaurant named for the grandmother who raised him and taught him to cook over a fire. Now he’s about to open Carrizal Molino y Masa, a restaurant built from the ground up around nixtamalization. The man is going all in.

And then there’s Chef Luis Martínez, who came to the U.S. from a small Zapotec pueblo in Oaxaca in 2005,  working first as a farmworker before building a culinary career that eventually landed him in Asheville, NC, running Tequio Foods. He sources heirloom corn directly from Zapotec farmers back home and gets it into kitchens across the South. His cooking and his mission are inseparable. 

Three chefs. Three regions. One grain that has sustained civilizations for thousands of years. I asked them four questions. Here’s what they had to say.

Conversación del maíz: A Q&A with Chef Alam Méndez, Chef José Contreras, and Chef Luis Martínez

Q1: What is nixtamalization, and what’s the culinary technique?

Chef Alam Méndez (Apapacho, Washington, DC): Nixtamalization is a traditional Mexican technique in which dried corn kernels are cooked and steeped in an alkaline solution — traditionally water and cal, which we call lime. The corn soaks for 12 to 48 hours, and during that time, the hull loosens and separates, the kernel softens, and something chemically fundamental shifts: the starch becomes workable, and the grain becomes masa. Then you wash it, grind it, and press it. At Apapacho, we grind our nixtamalized corn in-house every day. What you’re tasting in that tortilla isn’t just corn: it’s a process that’s been essentially unchanged for over three thousand years.

Chef José Contreras (Amelia’s / Carrizal Molino y Masa, Tucson): The word “Nixtamal” itself comes from Nahuatl. Nextli is the lime solution. Tamalli is the corn dough. So nixtamal, literally, is the corn after it’s been transformed by that alkaline cooking. The technique is straightforward on paper: you take your heirloom corn, you cook it in water with cal, and then you let it rest — steep — for many hours. Because of this process, the flavor deepens. You go from raw grain to something alive with possibility.

Chef Luis Martínez (Tequio Foods, Asheville): Nixtamalization is the reason corn sustained entire civilizations. The corn softens, the hull separates, and the grain undergoes both chemical and nutritional changes that transform it from a simple starch into something the human body can fully use. Indigenous communities developed this technique in Mesoamerica thousands of years ago. They didn’t have a laboratory. They had observation, patience, and generational knowledge. When I source my corn from Zapotec farmers in Oaxaca, from the same mountain communities where this knowledge originated, I’m reminded that nixtamalization isn’t just a technique — it’s a practice many of us chefs carry forward.

Q2: What does it mean to you?

Chef Alam Méndez: For me, cooking means home. Nixtamalization is the sound of the metate, the weight of fresh masa in your hands before it hits the comal. When I grind corn in-house at Apapacho, I’m returning to something that was always mine. It connects me to my mother, to my grandmother, to the cooks who came before all of us.

Chef José Contreras: It means I’m cooking the food of my people honestly. I grew up in Santa Rosa de Yécora, in the mountains of Sonora. My grandmother Amelia — after whom my first restaurant is named — cooked over a fire. She made tamales, birria, and everything from scratch. Nixtamalization was never a word she used, but as I open Carrizal, it’s my way of making that knowledge visible, of saying: this is worth a restaurant built around it. Every time we grind fresh masa, I feel like I’m honoring her properly.

Chef Luis Martínez: For me, nixtamalization is inseparable from sovereignty: food sovereignty, cultural sovereignty, Indigenous sovereignty. I was born in Santa Catarina Loxicha, a small Zapotec pueblo in Oaxaca. When I built Tequio Foods, my mission was to create a reason for families in those mountain communities not to leave. So when I nixtamalize, I’m thinking about those farmers. I’m thinking about what it means to keep this knowledge moving and alive.

Q3: What’s the relationship between corn and culture in your cooking?

Chef Alam Méndez: Corn is not an ingredient in Mexican cooking. It is Mexican cooking. Everything else builds around it, from moles and tamales to tlayudas and atoles. At Apapacho, I work with white, blue, and purple heirloom Oaxacan varieties because each has a distinct flavor profile and texture once it’s nixtamalized and ground. When I choose my corn, I’m choosing what culture I’m expressing. A blue corn tortilla on your table carries the history of Mexican agriculture.

Chef José Contreras: Corn is present in everything on my menus, from Amelia’s to Carrizal. But not just any corn — it’s our corn. Sonoran corn. The varieties my grandmother’s generation cooked with, which were grown in the borderlands between Mexico and the U.S. long before there was a border. When I press a tortilla at Carrizal from in-house masa, I’m making an argument that hasn’t been fully explored in Tucson: this is what the corn of this region tastes like when you treat it with the respect it deserves.

Chef Luis Martínez: In Zapotec cosmology, corn is an ancestor. It is the life cycle, and it is identity. The Zapotec people of Oaxaca have been cultivating hundreds of varieties of corn for millennia, and those varieties are themselves cultural records — each one adapted to a specific microclimate, a specific community, a specific way of eating. When I work with Tequio Foods to bring those varieties to chefs in Asheville, Charleston, and across the South, the statement I’m making is this: the people who grew it deserve to be named and paid fairly for it.

Q4: What has the process of nixtamalization taught you about discipline?

Chef Alam Méndez: It teaches you that the food does not wait for your schedule; you wait for the food. You set the corn to soak, and then the corn decides when it’s ready. You can’t rush it. You can’t skip the wash. You can’t grind masa that hasn’t fully transformed and expect it to behave. Every morning at Apapacho starts before the first guest ever walks in. That’s the discipline: showing up for a process that demands your full attention before it gives you anything back. I think that’s also what my mother’s kitchen taught me. Nothing worth cooking is fast.

Chef José Contreras: Building Carrizal has taken many months of work before we even start serving a single dish, and we’ve spent a lot of that time understanding the corn: how it behaves differently at different times of year, how temperature during steeping changes the texture of your masa, how a shortcut in the wash shows up immediately in the flavor. Nixtamalization strips away the idea that you can improvise your way through technique. You either respect the process, or you ruin the masa. It’s taught me to be patient with things I can’t control.

Chef Luis Martínez: Corn doesn’t lie. That’s the first thing. You can source the most beautiful heirloom grain in the world, and if you rush the soak, use the wrong lime ratio, or grind it too wet or too dry, it will fail you publicly, in front of a room full of people. Nixtamalization taught me that discipline requires respect — for the time the process demands, for the farmers who grew the grain, and for the knowledge developed over thousands of years and handed down through generations of Indigenous women who didn’t have the word ‘technique’ for it. They just called it cooking. That’s the discipline I try to bring to everything I do.

—>What I walked away with from these conversations is something I suspect any serious cook or food lover will recognize: the process that cannot be hurried. Corn doesn’t care about your service schedule or your Instagram. It transforms on its own timeline, and the chefs who honor that (Alam, José, Luis) are making some of the most honest, most alive food in the country right now. That tortilla you’re eating isn’t just corn. It’s three thousand years of knowledge in your hands. Treat it accordingly.