From Lebanon to Mexico with chef Erik Osol

Chef Erik Osol is fascinated with culture. The Boston native attributes growing up in a small town outside the city to feeding his insatiable curiosity of the world. Throughout his career, he has lived and worked all over the U.S., as well as in Italy and Indonesia. Most recently, he helmed the kitchen of Ilili, a modern Lebanese restaurant in New York City known for elevating the ubiquitous shawarma, before moving on to another NYC hot spot, La Esquina.

To Osol, food is an anthropologic puzzle he wants to solve. Cooking is as much about layering flavors and experimenting with ingredients as it is about blending cultures and understanding the intersection of food and life. He’s brought this obsession with him to La Esquina, the iconic underground speakeasy known for its taquitos and margaritas. Here, he’s infusing the traditional Mexican menu with global elements, creating dishes such as hoja taquitos, which wraps a filling of cochinita or seasoned pulled pork in Mexican hoja santa.

We caught up with Chef Osol to find out about this recent move to La Esquina, his perspective on the Latin food scene, and the exciting menu he has planned for the upcoming New York City Wine & Food Festival.

What drew you to the new opportunity at La Esquina?

La Esquina has a good iconic brand in the city, but more importantly I’ve been around Latin food since I started cooking and I’ve always loved it. To the point that if there isn’t something spicy in the meal, then I feel like I’ve almost haven’t eaten. So I think it’s a good time, basically.

Is there a particular Latin ingredient that you always have in your own kitchen?

We usually have jalapeños hanging around in the refrigerator and other than that, I’m usually never home. I don’t really eat at home very much.

What is your favorite Latin breakfast?

I love when the guys make me huevos revueltos en salsa. It’s like a chile de arbol sauce. They cook it and then they add salsa, and then it’s sort of like floating in the salsa. The eggs almost act like tofu and they soak up everything. It’s pretty delicious.

Can you tell us about your participation in this year’s NYC Wine & Food Festival’s Tacos and Tequila?

It’s fun. I’ve done it before in the past and it’s an interesting environment. A lot of different restaurants and there’s tons of people so you get to introduce them to what you do, and they get to sample things. I usually try to make a little challenging for people. This year we’re doing mollejas, the sweetbreads. We’re also going to some tamarind candy. It’s interesting because the people that come are from all over the place.

How are you preparing these mollejas?

We’re going to put them on the griddle and crisp them up. What I think is kind of cool is the way mole is made. They grind all of the ingredients first and make a dry blend. We’ll use that as a flavoring ingredient and serve it in tacos. I wouldn’t say it’s a traditional thing, but it’s an adaptation. I like to combine sweet, spicy, salty, sour flavors. That way your mouth gets to dance around.

Next, what’s new at La Esquina…

How do you deal with chef’s creative block?

I think that block comes from just working. Sometimes you just need to read and educate yourself. What’s great about working at La Esquina and doing Mexican food is that there’s so much to learn and explore. Throughout my life, I’ve tried to explore as much as possible.

It’s really more beneficial to talk to the people that you work with. I work with great guys who have recipes and flavors that they like. Sometimes we eat together and they show me what they think is good. Whether it’s good right off the bat or whether there’s stuff we can do to make it more sellable, we do that. I think that’s where a lot of inspiration comes from. Basically having relationships with people. I think that’s the beauty of the cuisine in general.

What trends do you foresee in the Latin food space?

In general, with everything, whether it’s Latin food or food from Kansas, it’s always about distribution. The more distribution channels open up, the more access we have to products. In some ways, that bucks the trend of buying local, but not entirely. Some things like hoja santa are really hard to get here. But it’s exciting to get those things. In New York City it’s really possible to get a lot of things. In terms of Latin food, I really think in the U.S. there’s this desire to learn and find stuff that’s real. Mexican cuisine is now part of UNESCO and with any great cuisine, there’s so many ways to learn about it. I really think it’s sort of hit its time. You have chefs like myself who aren’t Latin, but we’re cooking it. We love it the same way that chefs like Mario Batali wanted to cook Italian food 15 years ago.

Can we expect any changes to the current menu at La Esquina?

We just changed the menu in Brooklyn. We’re doing Tacos de Canasta, just tacos in a basket. We’re doing this other thing that is popular, somewhere [laughs]. We pick the hoja santa, we pickle it, and we wrap it around cochinita. I guess it was inspired by where I was before. It’s kind of like a grape leaf. We call it an Hoja Taquito.

Are there any other flavors or spices from your experience at Ilili that you’re incorporating into La Esquina?

Like I said, the Lebanese do the grape leaves and that’s where I got my inspiration for the Hoja Taquito. Strangely enough, Tacos al Pastor are sort of like a Lebanese import made Mexican. That’s exciting to me. I love the way cultures blend. I love the way it’s sort of an anthropologic sort of puzzle.

In terms of what it brings to Mexico, the al Pastor is one of the favorites. Eventually everything will sort of be blended together. Right now in Brooklyn, we have some smaller plates and are trying to encourage the idea of having a more varied meal with some pickles. We serve these little fried misshapen arepas, almost like a frita or a fat chip. And then little snacks that are delicious and fill out your meal. We’re going to bring some of that into SOHO. We have catering that we do which is fun, and hopefully we can incorporate the Tacos en Canasta to the catering.

There’s so much food that you want to give to people and show them all these things that you can do.