The nose knows Taqueria’s aromatic tactic draws a crowd for authentic Mexican street eats By: David Sanderson Posted: 3:00 AM CDT Saturday, Jun. 22, 2024

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This article was published 22/06/2024 (664 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Olfaction, the sense of smell, is the strongest sense in the human body, but don’t take our word for it.

Instead, listen to what Roberto Cano Rodriguez of Berto’s Taqueria, a ghost kitchen that operates two days a week out of Tommy’s Pizzeria at 842 Corydon Ave., has to say on the matter.

Last month, Cano Rodriguez took advantage of a sun-drenched Sunday afternoon by moving his setup outdoors to prepare food on Tommy’s spacious patio, in an effort to emulate an authentic Mexican street-taco experience. Forty-five minutes after firing up a grill laden with a mountain of chipotle chicken and slow-cooked beef, he welcomed a small group of people who informed him they had been out for a casual stroll through the neighbourhood when they picked up the aroma of something yummy.

Funny they should say that, came Cano Rodriguez’s response. As it turned out, they weren’t the only ones that day who had followed their sniffer to his locale.

Despite the fact he’d barely advertised what he was up to, the patio and dining room were packed, and a lineup was starting to form down the street, Cano Rodriguez says, seated inside Tommy’s, where he serves as head chef Tuesday through Saturday, when the award-winning resto is ordinarily open.

“Instagram and Facebook are great for getting the word out but I guess a good sense of smell helps, too.”

Cano Rodriguez, 26, was born and raised in Lima, Peru. He graduated high school at age 16, as is typical in the South American nation. At his mother’s urging he left for Salt Lake City soon thereafter to stay with an aunt. “Mostly because I was sitting around all day and night, not doing much of anything,” he says with a laugh, when asked why he was given the boot.

He spent three years in Utah studying psychology at Brigham Young University, before transferring to BYU’s satellite campus in Rexburg, Idaho. His preference was to continue living in the U.S., but without any true job prospects — “or marital ones,” he guffaws — he was eventually forced to return to Lima.

Salt Lake City has a tremendously active food scene, and it was there where he started to become acquainted with different dishes from around the world. He also worked part-time at a number of restaurants during his stay in the U.S. Having enjoyed the experience immensely, in 2019 he enrolled in a one-year Le Cordon Bleu culinary course that was being offered in his home city.

It was through his sister, who had relocated to Winnipeg to improve her French, that he learned about the culinary arts program at the Manitoba Institute of Trades and Technology. His application was accepted, and he followed his sibling to Canada in January 2020 to undertake the 10-month program.

Within days, not only had he had endured the first bone-chilling -30 C temperatures of his life, he’d also landed a line-cook position at Tommy’s Pizzeria, which had recently opened in a 100-year-old building nestled on the Corydon strip. The pandemic hit a few weeks later and everything suddenly went into lockdown, he recalls.

Cano Rodriguez stayed on at Tommy’s after completing his course at MITT. He guesses it was in the fall of 2021 when Thomas Schneider, Tommy’s owner and a former member of Canada’s World Pizza Champions squad, called a staff meeting to discuss expanding the menu.

“This was back when we were still trying to recover from COVID, and Tommy was looking for suggestions about what we could do to bring in more customers,’” he says.

One of Cano Rodriguez’s favourite remembrances of Salt Lake City was its vibrant Mexican population. Street taco stands were commonplace there and although tacos weren’t something he’d grown up eating — Peruvian cuisine isn’t spicy at all, he points out — he came to enjoy them, especially when they were served on corn tortillas along with an expanse of fresh toppings.

What about introducing a taco Tuesday promotion, he piped up during the gathering? Tell him more, his boss shot back.

“We started with birria tacos, which is juicy braised beef, and then began rotating that with chicken carnitas, al pastor tacos (pork and pineapple), fish tacos and carne asada (marinated grilled steak),” says Cano Rodriguez, jokingly crediting YouTube and the Food Network for teaching him everything he needed to know about creating the perfect Mexican-style taco.

“They turned out to be pretty popular but became even more so after Tommy’s placed second in a Taco Week event, the following June (2022).”

In September 2022 Cano Rodriguez and Schneider devised a new plan. Since the pizzeria was shuttered Sundays and Mondays, why not experiment with the idea of a ghost kitchen on those two days, one that would serve a variety of Mexican-style fare? Not just tacos, but burritos, house-made chips and desserts, to boot.

Initially, it was just Cano Rodriguez cooking and his business partner and friend Cordell Drohomereski taking orders. After an influencer tagged the fledgling operation in its second month, however, things exploded. Cano Rodriguez remembers arriving for work one Sunday that fall and “freaking out” after seeing 50 pre-orders on their tablet, before he’d even switched on the lights.

Aside from keeping up with demand, the biggest challenge Cano Rodriguez faces is parties wondering where the heck Berto’s Taqueria is situated in the first place.

Sure, they list the address on their social media platforms, plus they park a sandwich board on the sidewalk directly outside the front door listing their hours, generally 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. Still, he and his crew, which presently consists of fellow Tommy’s staff members who are interested in picking up extra hours, continue to field calls from confused customers driving around in circles.

“One time there was a Skip (the Dishes) driver literally standing in the lobby area, talking to one of our people on the phone, 10 feet away. He kept saying ‘Where are you, exactly?’ and she was like ‘right in front of you!’ as she waved her hands.”

In addition to cooking out of Tommy’s, Cano Rodriguez, who recently entered into an association with Los Comales Morales, a Mexican-born husband-and-wife duo who turn out gluten-free, artisinal corn tortillas, has also been hired to erect pop-up taco bars at breweries around the city. Those include Barn Hammer Brewing Company, Kilter Brewing Co. and Nonsuch Brewing Co., the latter of which enlisted his services for a Cinco de Mayo celebration. (Day of the Dead is a Mexican holiday that falls annually in November and — just throwing it out there — what better than a ghost kitchen to handle the cooking?)

Cano Rodriguez adjusts his apron, saying he knew that question was going to come up sooner or later, when he is quizzed about putting down permanent roots, somewhere down the road.

“Just like anybody else in this industry would tell you, yes, I would love to have my own restaurant one day. But there’s a lot of risk involved and it’s not something I would dive into blindly,” he says, mentioning the best compliment he’s received thus far came from his girlfriend, who happens to be Mexican and who informed him early on in their relationship that his fare reminds her of home. Even better: she was already patronizing Berto’s Taqueria before they started dating.

“Some people get excited and enter into things too soon, which can unfortunately lead to problems down the road,” he continues. “To me, I have a great job at Tommy’s plus I have Berto’s on the side, growing as a brand. For now, that’s all a person can really ask for.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca