Owner of La Caretta to bring taste to the coastal Mexican in Baton Rouge with this new restaurant – Advocate

Verakruz, a coastal city in Mexico, has a lot in common with South Louisiana in terms of the kitchen. It has a mixture of indigenous, Creole Caribbean and Spanish influences, while including many seafood and similar cooking techniques. But for William Maker, what stood out was the ingredients.

“Many of the ingredients we ate, growing up in Honduras,” he said. They use plants. They use Yuka. “

He believed that Veracruz would have many to offer Baton Rouge in terms of scents and dishes that people in the city may not be so familiar. Now, after more than a year of work on the building, previously occupied by Voodoo BBQ, Meeder, which is also one of the owners of La Carreta, a new venture based on the Kitchen of Veracruus begins.

In collaboration with his wife, Maders plans to open Veracruz on March 6th.

The concept is Mar y tierra, which directly translates as “surf and grass,” said Maker – this is land and sea.

“We want to play with a little of this (the concept of land and sea) in order to have a good balance between the lively coastal fresh seafood, but also our favorite – Tako, many of the Mexican food we are already used to,” he said.

In the last year, Mir has worked with Edgar Caro, a consultant and culinary director of Vracruz to develop the menu and fulfill his vision. Caro, which owns many restaurants in New Orleans, including a South American steakhouse named Bras, said the Veracruus menu has coastal Mexican food, presented with a small sense of Louisiana.

“We are trying to push the envelope a little more, exploring more in the coastal kitchen in just one region of Mexico, which is Veracruz,” said Caro, “Then take it from there and rethink these dishes using the ingredients of Louisiana using some techniques similar to The ones we can use here in Louisiana. “

One example of this is ostion or removed from corn chambers fried oysters.

“It’s not the taco you’ll see in Mexico,” said Caro, “but it’s also a taco, which I see very much at Louisiana.”

Other menu accents include Pescado a la veracruzana, which features a carbon red stuper in a tomato sauce based on the tomato-based capers and onions, said this dish would be their meal with a signature. The whole Zarandeado fish is made with butterfly trout trout in salsa Verde, and Arroz a la tumbada is a game of Mexican Paela and Dzhambalai.

The central element in the restaurant’s menu is cooking objects on a wood fire grille. When the cooks cook trout, they do not fry it. Instead, the fish is prepared in an oven of wood imported from Spain. So is the chicken in their enhiladi and their Carne Asada. For the first time, Caro fell in love with cooking over wood fire while working on brass, and he brought this experience to this new endeavor.

The goal, Caro said, is to “bring some of this rural cooking over a fire and to a farm in a more impaired fine nutrition.”

Before the big opening on March 6, the owners plan to have some soft days to open on Tuesday until Thursday the previous week. Once they have found themselves, Maker said they plan to change the seasonal elements of the menu seasonally as they continue to explore Veracruz’s kitchen.

Meeder and Caro have a culinary trip to Veracruz on books to make the menu more developed.

“Honestly, we just want people to come and experience a little of the food that is traditionally at Verakruz,” Maker said when he asked him for his hopes for the restaurant. “Good vibrations, good atmosphere – just offer people something that is a little different and constantly challenging to continue to develop, to continue learning, to continue to have a menu that people can always be excited about. “

Veracruz, 3510 Drusilla Lane, Baton Rouge, will be opened on March 6th.