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A Taste of Tomate
Evanston restaurant owner describes beginnings BY LIZZEY JOHNSON
Open the door of Tomate Fresh Kitchen, and wrap yourself in the warm scent of sizzling tortillas being fried to perfection. The restaurant has already formed a line of loyal patrons longer than its short entryway can accommodate. Still, the prospect of having to wait outside in frigid temperatures doesn’t taint the allure of made-toorder Latin meals. The staggering success of Tomate means chef and owner Tania Merlos-Ruiz deserves high praise, yet she deflects the divine accomplishment of selling out of food in their first week. “We didn’t expect the turnout we’ve been getting,” Merlos-Ruiz said. Her dear friend and co-worker, Mary Lewis, recalls how frazzled the restaurant was by the crazed crowd of customers. “You all looked like a pinball machine,” Lewis said. Merlos-Ruiz echoes her sentiment, “I wanted to close the door!” Much attributed to her vast background in the culinary world, Merlos-Ruiz’s tastes don’t merely subscribe to the Latin standard. Instead, she incorporates seasonal fare into traditional favorites. Her favorite dish on the menu may be the tilapia fish taco, but she contends that her salads are a top
competitor. “If you’re going to have a salad, you may as well have a good salad!” Merlos-Ruiz said. And let’s not forget the most important part of the meal: dessert. “When I worked at restaurants, desserts weren’t a big thing,” Merlos-Ruiz said. “A cake would last a week — but here, two days.” Merlos-Ruiz said she enjoys bringing some of Latin America’s less mainstream produce to Evanston, such as Guatemalan chipilin and yucca from Mexico. She complements these foreign flavors with nearby products, deriving a significant portion of the restaurant’s ingredients from local farms. Her ability to transcend traditional Latin food norms, while preserving the authenticity of the dish, is nothing short of wonderful. But what exactly makes her fare so fantastic? A collection of secret recipes and a dough worth dreaming about … literally. Merlos-Ruiz’s concept for her empanada dough came calling in the middle of the night. “The dough (when I first started making empanadas) was a little thick,” Merlos-Ruiz said. By the grace of a dream, she remembered rolling pasta during her stint at an Italian restaurant and realized this could be the fateful resolution to her dough dilemma. Once she had streamlined her empanada, she » See TASTE OF TOMATE, page 2
Source: Tomate Fresh Kitchen and Sarah Nelson/Daily Senior Staffer
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