In Oaxaca, a Cook Creates a Stir

OAXACA CITY, Mexico, April 20, 2005 — The people of this colonial city are particularly opinionated when it comes to mole. With good reason.

Mole is as much a part of Oaxacan culture as the architecture of the pre-Columbian hilltop city of Monte Albán. Ancient friezes show people preparing and eating mole, a chili-based dish that is the centerpiece of many a feast.

Puebla, the state northwest of Oaxaca, may be well known for its mole poblano, but when it comes to variety, Oaxaca wins. There are seven moles here: the rich, chocolaty negro; the sweet and sour manchamantel; the spicy coloradito; the equally spicy roja; the often intensely hot amarillo; the smoky chíchilo; and the fresh, herb-dominated verde.

Though mole (pronounced MO-lay) has the consistency of a thick soup, and is often poured on top of poached chicken or pork like a sauce, it is considered neither by Oaxaqueños. Attend a fiesta or wedding and you will find two or more kinds of mole on the banquet table: meat wouldn't necessarily be the centerpiece. In Oaxaca, a great mole stands alone. And among die-hard traditionalists, the addition of lard is inevitable. But this is where Iliana de la Vega comes in.

Ms. de la Vega, 42, has owned El Naranjo restaurant here for five years, drawing an international roster of fans who love her light and refreshing renditions of a sometimes heavy cuisine. But among her fellow Oaxacans, she is a culinary heretic.

Ms. de la Vega alternates between amusement and perplexity when she describes the emotions she stirred among her neighbors when she rejected lard in her dishes. And then there was her eyebrow-raising embrace of expensive organic produce. "I find it very patronizing when people have this idea that to make Oaxacan cuisine you have to be a Zapotec woman with long braids and a serape working over a stone comal," she said. "There is a modern Mexico in the best sense of the word, and chefs here who want Mexican cuisine to evolve into something healthful and interesting."

Though her family is from Oaxaca, Ms. de la Vega grew up in Mexico City. She learned the regional cuisine from her mother, her aunt and on visits with her Oaxacan relatives. When she and her husband, Ernesto Torrealba, an architect, decided to leave Mexico City in search of a quieter life in Oaxaca, it seemed natural to put her skills and ideas to work.

"It was so funny when I first came back," she said with a laugh. "All my family was so pleased. They all said: `Oh, we're so happy to have you. This is where you belong.' Then I opened El Naranjo and suddenly their attitude was `Who do you think you are? You foreigner.' "

Armed with little more than confidence in her own taste and instincts, Ms. de la Vega reinterpreted traditional dishes — without the sacred lard. "Lard overpowers so many subtle and interesting flavors," she said. "Lard is a very old-fashioned idea, one that doesn't have a place in modern society."

"Most Mexicans today don't work in fields, they work in offices," she said. "You do not want to eat a mole made with lard and then go sit in front of a computer."

The tempest seems overblown in a city where few restaurants show off the local cuisine. With notable exceptions like Tlamanalli, Abigail Mendoza's restaurant in Teotitlán del Valle, about 20 miles from Oaxaca, most of the good cooking in the area is confined to people's homes. The food of Oaxaca has a great champion in Susana Trilling, who devoted a cookbook and a PBS series to the topic and runs a cooking school not far from the city, but her kitchen is not open to the public.

"The basic problem is that Oaxaqueños do not go out for Oaxacan food," Ms. de la Vega said. "As far as they're concerned, their aunt, their cousin, their wife, their mother all make better food than they could find in any restaurant."

Entering El Naranjo's nearly hidden doorway into its open courtyard is a step back into an earlier time. The green stone floor was laid in the 17th century. The columns and Moorish arches, and the huge and ancient orange tree growing in the center of the patio dining room reflect the region's eclectic influences.

The menu includes dishes like a rich pecan soup whose nuttiness is offset by chipotle chilies and tomatoes. There are taquitos de Santa Clara, tortillas filled with pork, olives, raisins and capers, then deep fried and topped with a crumbly cheese and a piquant mole coloradito. Ms. de la Vega's manchamantel (the word means tablecloth stainer) mole has intense heat and spice balanced by pineapple and banana.

El Naranjo's coloradito mole is a particular favorite of Jennifer Clement, an author who lives in Mexico City and whose sister, Barbara Sibley, owns La Palapa in New York. "There is definitely an influence of nouvelle cuisine," she said of Ms. de la Vega's menu. "You can tell, because Iliana takes such great care in how she blends the flavors, and how those flavors marry. The result is Oaxacan cuisine that is both traditional and elegant."

Rick Bayless, the chef at Frontera Grill and Topolobampo in Chicago and the author of five Mexican cookbooks, is also one of Ms. de la Vega's fans. When he sampled her food, he said, he was struck "by this wonderful balance, this lovely continuation of traditional cooking with elements which were lighter and more innovative."

"It's very personal cooking, but not too far out," he said. "I thought immediately that this is the kind of evolution that will keep Mexican food alive."

He disagrees with her proscription of lard, though. "There is nothing wrong with lard," he said. "It has the cholesterol and a little more than half the fat of butter. It's a social issue, not a nutritional one."

To the dismay of Ms. de la Vega, who uses canola or light vegetable oil in her moles and other dishes, the Lard War is not confined to the trading of barbs. During El Naranjo's first year, she sensed that she was being snubbed by local diners.

"It was so strange," Ms. de la Vega said. "Prominent people from the community would come in and order dishes. Then, without even tasting them, they would send them back to the kitchen and made a big show about it. They would order something else and send it back as well. It was horrible. We were so broke, just eating beans and tortillas ourselves. We really didn't think we'd make it."

In El Naranjo's second year, favorable guidebook mentions pushed it to a small profit. Though the initial buzz was created by North Americans, El Naranjo has become popular with Mexicans visiting from Mexico City and Monterrey.

But Oaxaqueños continue to stay away. As a result, the operation is small and tightly managed. Ms. de la Vega combines her duties as chef and principal greeter with her family's evening meal. Usually, her husband and their daughters — Anna, 13, and Isabel, 11 — her mother, Ana Maria Arnaud de la Vega, and a family friend or two are seated at a table in the dining room.

Ms. de la Vega isn't sure she will ever win over her critics.

"Oh, I doubt if things will ever change that much," she said. "If Oaxaqueños really find themselves compelled to visit a restaurant, they'll probably go looking for pizza."