Cedar Rapids Mexican restaurant instills heritage in new ways through class for tamales, tequila

CEDAR RAPIDS — With 31 Mexican restaurants in the city of Cedar Rapids alone, authenticity is one of the biggest qualifiers guiding many diners to choose their favorite for traditional, street food or hybrid entrees.

But one restaurateur is standing out from the crowd by turning the tables — telling the people who love her food the most to make it themselves.

Rio Burritos’ new workshop for tamales and tequila, introduced in January, is letting diners take their cultural appreciation to the next level by giving them some skin in the game. With just a handful of ingredients, Mexican food lovers are finding out just how much labor goes into the dishes they love most.

For $24, you can buy a dozen tamales from owner Phoebe Rios, who spends an entire day making roughly 500 tamales each time she accepts orders. For about the same price, you can learn how to make them, take half a dozen home, have a few drinks and make a few friends along the way.

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The class takes two hours — just enough time to give a taste of what it takes to make the dish traditionally eaten for breakfast in Mexico.

“I wanted to educate people on it and make sure they understand it’s a labor of love,” Rios said. “Every generation is different, but I feel like people are becoming more accepting, wanting to know more. Before, it was something they didn’t give a second thought.”

Now, they’re intrigued about the processes that lend authenticity to their favorite foods.

The process

For its introduction, students first learn an important lesson in authenticity for any culture: Rarely is there only one way to make something across an entire, diverse country.

In Mexico, a country with more than 126 million people over 32 states, there are about 500 different variations of tamales. A tamal in every corner of the country is going to taste different based on the source of the corn used in masa — the corn flour dough that makes the base of a tamal.

Phoebe Rios, who grew up in Chicago, channels her street food focus through a northern Mexico heritage. Today, many Mexicans and Americans use a commercially produced type of corn flour mix. Rios prefers a type that technically is used for tortillas more than tamales, but is less coarse and easier to cook.

A bag of corn husks are passed around the room for a smell. The dried husks have a unique, pungent smell — adjacent to vinegar — from the preservatives used to keep them in storage. Another part of the laborious process is removing that smell by soaking them in hot water.

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If you come across a “hair” from corn tassels or corn silk, brush it off. And if you spot a corn moth, just shake it off before cleaning in hot water, she said — they’re harmless.

Next, those making tamales learn a lesson in tactile sensitivity by deciphering which side of the corn husk is more smooth. The smooth side serves as the interior of a tamal.

Masa dough is made with corn flour, an ingredient of choice to bind the flour — be it corn oil, vegetable oil, Crisco or lard — and your seasoning of choice, typically something like salt or chicken bullion. Water or broth is folded into the kneading process.

Participants were given a spoon to portion the soft, spreadable dough onto husks at their desired thickness. By the end, most found better luck using their fingers.

After filling with the students’ choice of meat or beans and cheese, tamales are folded neatly into their husks and steamed over boiling water for 45 minutes.

Tamales can be cooked and then frozen, for longer storage of large batches. Freezing before they’re steamed is not advised, Rios said.

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“If you’re going to dive in and make them, just be mentally prepared that it’s going to be messy, it’s going to be a lot of work, but at the end of the day it’s all worth it,” said Rios, who lined tables with covers before the class started.

Instilling her heritage

For her, hands-on learning experiences are the kind she hopes to replicate, in some way or another, for those who did not grow up with the same background. Growing up in the 1970s, the restaurateur remembers messy kitchens where she would sneak out some raw dough to eat during tamal-making days, only to get sick after sampling too much.

Back then, the mentalities in families similar to hers often neutralized their culture. As other Latino children in her school or neighborhood were raised to speak only English for the best chance at assimilation and the best chance of avoiding division, Rios’ mother insisted her children not forget their roots.

“Even though I was born in the U.S., I didn’t speak English until I went to kindergarten. She needed to make sure Spanish was instilled in me,” Rios said. “It was always instilled in us to not forget where we came from.”

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And as she gradually became bilingual, her family emphasized cognizance of others like her who struggled for their place in the United States.

Now, she makes sure her children have the same kinds of memories in her kitchen at home and the restaurant, where her children are starting to step into management. When Rios first started serving the public in the early 2000s, she said most of Cedar Rapids’ Mexican food scene was Tex-Mex style.

“Back in the day, it was flour (tortilla) enchiladas,” she said — as opposed to the more authentic and structurally sound corn tortillas. “If you mentioned menudo (to customers) they’d be like ‘What? That’s insane.’ ”

After spending decades in various iterations of her restaurant around Cedar Rapids, she is encouraged by a new type of interest in her food that has gone beyond the surface level of small talk between diners and servers. Now, she feels more comfortable evolving her menu to offer a more authentic style.

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“It’s heartwarming when people are accepting of it. We were taught as young ones to be very strong-willed people — that this is how it is, like it or not,” she said. “I think that kind of went into my personality. This is what I have, this is what I offer you, this is me — like it or not.”

The new workshop, which also delivers a few shots of tequila knowledge with a bar sampling after the food is finished, seems to have inspired some similar classes at other Mexican restaurants in the Corridor. With strong interest in her first class, Rios said the restaurant is formulating other workshops to make homemade tortillas and piñatas.

“We need to be able to provide a different experience that gives insight to our culture, and something I personally love: making food,” Rios said.

Comments: Features reporter Elijah Decious can be reached at (319) 398-8340 or elijah.decious@thegazette.com.