Heirloom corn
Itanoní co-op, Oaxaca
Single-origin nixtamal, milled in Toronto by hand for service.
La Cocina
How we cook,
and where it comes from.
Manifiesto
Mexican cuisine is regional.
If our menu reads like a Tex-Mex menu reformatted, we have done the wrong job. Our kitchen pulls from three places: Oaxaca for moles, Yucatán for the slow roasts, Puebla for the daily masa work. The menu is not exhaustive, and it does not try to be.
We make our own corn from start to finish. The kernels arrive whole; we nixtamalize, mill, and press in-house every morning. Tortillas leave the comal between an order being placed and the food landing on the table. This is not a flourish. It is the difference between Mexican cuisine and a version of it.
We treat the bar as half the room. The mezcal program is sourced direct from producers we have visited, and the cocktails are built around what we are drinking that month. Our beverage team has more autonomy than is normal for a kitchen-led restaurant; that is on purpose.
We do not chase trends. We do not run pop-ups. We are not a Tex-Mex restaurant, and we are not a fine-dining restaurant pretending to be a cantina. We are a regional Mexican cantina, in a city far from where the cooking comes from, and we built the place to make that distinction obvious.
De Donde Viene
Where it comes from.
A working list. Names change as growers come into season; the list is updated at the start of each quarter.
Pasture pork
Sosnicki Farms, Mount Forest, ON
Berkshire crosses raised on pasture. Two pigs every two weeks.
Market fish
Hooked Inc., Toronto
Canadian boats only, day-boat catch when available.
Herbs and produce
Hawthorne Farm, Palmerston, ON
Mexican varietals trialled in our growing plan since 2023.
Mezcal
Sourced direct, Oaxaca and Durango
Twenty-three small producers. Two trips a year, every year.
Honey and piloncillo
Lewis Family Apiaries; Cabaña Las Lilas
Local honey for cocktails; piloncillo from Veracruz for pastry.
La Historia
How Calabaza came to be.
- 2019
Lupita Salazar, our chef, leaves a sous role at Pujol in Mexico City. Carlos Ortiz, our beverage director, leaves Cosme NYC. They circle each other for a year before deciding to open something together in the city Lupita's family settled in.
- 2021
First trip to Itanoní in Oaxaca to negotiate a corn supply. The agreement runs on a handshake and a wire transfer twice a year.
- 2023
First trial dinner in a borrowed kitchen on Roncesvalles. Forty seats, one menu, no service plan. Sells out in nine minutes.
- 2024
Calabaza opens at the corner of Roncesvalles and Howard Park. Six bar stools, twenty-eight in the dining room, eight at the counter facing the kitchen.
“The first hurdle is convincing people we are not a Tex-Mex spot. Everything else is downstream of that.”
Lupita Salazar, Chef