http://www.mexicocityfoodproducts.com.au/about.html
When we were trying to find sources for our first Australian Cinco de Mayo party, we had a critical issue looming in front of us: Where are we going to get tortillas?
Tortillas are the fundament of Mexican meals. Especially corn tortillas. In Austin if I found a place that made their own corn tortillas and served them fresh, I became a devotee for life. In Sydney, your options for tortillas at the mainstream grocer are pretty grim. You’ll find flour tortillas (sometimes called “wraps”, wtf?), but they are thin, characterless industrial products. Servicable. I buy the Bazaar brand. But corn torts are harder to come by. The one kind I find commonly at Coles and Woolies is crumbly and dry.
Courtney was picking up our bain marie (chafing dish) at the Complete Kitchenware on Parramatta Road, and as she was explaining what she was going to do with the gear, she mentioned we were making Mexican food. The counter clerk asked if we’d met Luis Sada of Mexico City Food Products. We hadn’t.
But we would!!! Luis rocks!!!
Luis used to run a Mexican restaurant in Mortdale, and made his own corn tortillas and chips in the old fashioned way. He found that people kept asking him where he got his chips, and when they learned he was making them, they wanted to buy them. Soon he was supplying quite a few of his competitors with chips and tortillas as well. He realised later on that he could focus on the chips and tortillas and do pretty well, as few people in Australia are making them completely from scratch like Luis. He found a factory space in Mortdale and set up his production line.
Ok, so I have had a tortilla chip as it rolled off the conveyor belt seconds after being rolled, cut, fried and salted. Awesome!
Luis makes his own masa (corn dough) in the traditional way. This is critical. They soak corn in lime and water and grind it up into thick yellow dough. Fresh masa is the bomb. If you are making tamales, or gorditas, or your own corn tortillas, you would prefer fresh masa rather than a powdered mix like Maseca (although I’ved used Maseca for ages, just not as good).
When finished the masa is placed into a hopper and Luis has a machine that rolls it out. He can cut the flattened masa into triangle chips, round chips, or tortilla-sized rounds. These then go through a spiral-shaped cooker that flips them halfway through. If he’s making tortillas, this is the end of the process and they are bagged. If it’s chipped, a fryer attachment is added onto the cooker, and the just-baked masa is then quickly fried and dumped onto another conveyer belt to cool and get salted. Then they are gathered into bags for shipment or for packaging.
We’ve visited the factory in Mortdale a couple of times now, and Luis always takes the time to talk to us, even though he’s obviously very busy. The place smells great.
If we’re entertaining, we’ll pick up a box or large bag of chips, and we’ll also buy some fresh masa to take home and freeze. We’ll also grab 6 or 12 dozen corn tortillas to freeze as well. These tortillas are really nice, some of the best I’ve had in Australia. They don’t have that tire-tread look that the corn tortillas at Guzman y Gomez and Baja Cantina have, and I think they taste better.
I was hoping to visit Luis and get some fresh pics of him and the factory, but I’ve been slammed at work and unable to get away during business hours. Maybe I can post a follow-up to this post at a later date.
You can buy Luis’ chips at Harris Farms, someone is packaging them for resale. The bag label is a little underwhelming, but it looks like this.
If you want tortillas, give Luis and Herve a call. We usually arrange to meet them when they make a deliveries to Glebe and pick up our goodies.
Hasta!