Gustavo Romero and Kate Romero have set out on a mission unlike any other. They look to galvanize Mexican food into a new understanding in two different ways.
The first of these paradigms is centered around corn. They created a restaurant named “Oro by Nixta,” which has corn as the centerpiece. Kate Romero explained this sentiment by saying, “[Corn is] no longer something that’s just a filler. It can be the star of a dish.” Gustavo Romero describes the role of corn in his Mexican heritage, saying, “If you take the maiz from Mexico, then you strip like a huge part of our identity and our culture.” Corn has been a part of the culture since the time of the Aztecs; as Gustavo Romero said, “We [Aztecs] moved away chasing animals to hunt, but we always brought corn with us…we would start all the diets with corn.” However, the corn that they are using is not the typical sweet corn so frequently seen in Minnesota. As Kate Romero said, “A lot of the corn that grows in this area is not good for consumption… because some of this generically modified corn, they need certain [terrible] chemicals to be able to grow… They [varieties of corn] are actually banned in a lot of countries.”
In light of this, they use corn native to the Americas, which has systematically been destroyed in the USA. Gustavo Romero believes, “By exposing people to this type of corn.. [we] protect it [corn]. The more we use it, the more we make people aware of what we have. And the more people use it, and the more people understand it.”
The second part of their mission to galvanize Mexican food is to redefine the old, tired, and beaten stereotype of Mexican food. Gustavo Romero describes, “I think the idea that they [America] has about Mexican food was very wrong. Thinking it was supposed to be cheap and that it’s supposed to be kind of like a second-class kind of food.” Kate Romero jumped in quickly with an anecdote, saying, “We still get people here who’ll say I’ll have a side of rice and beans. And I’m like, well, that’s not on the menu, you know? And those things, although they are consumed there, they’re also like a filler. So that’s not what we want people to have here.” They look to channel an authentic experience of Mexican food through a redefinition of corn and a change to the classic menu, which takes Mexican food out of a “second class,” and firmly affirms it as an equal to any other cuisine. This restaurant has flourished into a renowned restaurant locally and is breaking onto the national scene, with Bon Appetit naming it one of the best new restaurants in 2024 and Nixta by Oro being nominated for a James Beard Award in 2023.
