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By Annelise Kelly
Beans, rice and a little shredded lettuce — along with salsa and guacamole — are the most common entrée accompaniments that diners find on Mexican restaurant menus. When it comes to side dishes, an enticing selection of creative side dishes, it seems, is often in short supply.
The fact is that side dishes are bursting with potential for chefs, diners — and your bottom line!
Side dishes can give chefs an opportunity to express their culinary creativity, entice customers to try
a new dish, enhance the aesthetic appeal of most any entree, set your restaurant apart from your beans- rice-and-salad focused competitors — and boost profits in the process.
Eric Williams, chef/owner of Momocho in Cleveland, Ohio, and El Carnicero in nearby suburban Lakewood, is one chef elevating sides — which he dubs meriendas on both menus. The word, he explains, translates to “little whims.” The section includes several dishes that could be categorized as sides or appetizers — “just something extra,” Williams says, noting that an appetizer can be a side dish, and a side dish can be an appetizer. While the general notion is that those are two different categories, Williams says he purposely blurs the distinction “so that they’re more accessible to eating either as a starter or with an entree.”
And because Williams says customers love to special order, he purposely has written his restaurants’ menus without pairing specific side dishes with each entrée “so customers feel they’re making their own dish.
“It’s their decision to order food like that and I feel like they’re more satisfied with the choices that they made,” he says. In addition, keeping the side dishes a la carte prevents “anarchy in the kitchen” when a substitution is made, he adds.
The servers at Williams’ restaurants are trained and encouraged to help customers with their special orders. Case in point: At both Momocho and El Carnicero, they suggest Fried Brussels Sprouts prepared with coconut vinegar and chile-spiced peanuts as the side dish for the Machaca Taquitos — the #1 seller on the build- your-own taquitos menu for the last 17 years. “It’s a very rich, slightly spicy, full-flavored beef dish...and the Brussels Sprouts have that vinegar acidic juxtaposition to the rich beef, so it kind of changes the [flavor] pro- files as you’re eating. You’re not just eating that same one taste from start to finish,” Williams says.
In addition to the Brussels Sprouts, Momocho and El Carnicero also offer Carrot “Elote,” a dish inspired by corn elote and prepared with habanero-agave butter, citrus crema, and queso cotija. Tamale Tots served with red chile-chocolate mole, queso cotija, and toasted sesame, and Potato el Royal made with smashed, fried potatoes, almond salsa macha, pecorino and a fried egg join the Brussels Sprouts and Carrot Elote on El Carnicero’s menu.
Why the slightly different side dish offerings? So Williams’ fans will keep visiting both of his restaurants, which are less than seven miles apart, he says.
Match-making Tips
Once you depart from the basic rice- and-refried beans-with-every-dish formula, how do you decide what sides to pair with main dishes — or what sides to suggest your customers choose when ordering a side?
Sofia Sada Cervantes, professor and Latin Program Lead at the Culinary Institute of America, offers several tips based on her extensive research and travels.
“What I usually see are proteins like steak, carne asada, paired with potato dishes or fresh salad, and seafood paired with rice,” says Sada Cervantes. She also shares the kinds of culinary pairings most frequently found in different regions in Mexico.
“You’ll see a more acidic kind of sauce, vinegar- and lime- based, with fish and seafood all around the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico. So, a heavier side dish like rice or pasta balances it out,” Sada Cervantes says.
In Northern Mexico, more robust, spicy, heavier, charred sauces that are less acidic are favored. “So usually
in northern Mexico they’ll choosea lighter vegetable to go with steak or chicken,” Sada Cervantes continues. Heavy proteins, she adds, are seen more often in the center of the country “so the side dish will also be lighter — corn, beans, vegetables, squash.”
One example of a squash dish that works well as a side is Chef Lois Ellen Frank’s Calabacitas — “a traditional Southwestern favorite dish featuring yellow summer squash and zucchini served on almost every Pueblo and all throughout Northern New Mexico and on many of the Pueblo Feast,” Frank explains in her new book, “Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky: Modern Plant-Based Recipes Using Native American Ingre dients.” She calls it “a tasty dish that brightens any meal.”
Rice and pasta in creative presentations are also good side dish options, as Sada Cervantes observed while traveling recently to Monterrey, Mexico.
“Rice is having a big moment. Lots of restaurants are doing a risotto-type dish, using classic white or basmati rice, called arroz meloso, which translates to creamy, silky. It is rich, with cream or cheese,” she reports.
When it comes to pasta, it’s all about the sauce, she says.
“A lot of creamy peppers — poblano, red bell pepper with chipotle. It can be like rajas, or blended with onion, garlic, corn,” she says.
Other side dishes trending on restaurant tables in Mexico include Brussels sprouts at “a lot of higher-end restaurants” and Papas a la Diabla, which she describes as “marble potatoes with butter and chile de árbol.”
The Profit Potential
A menu featuring creative, inviting side dishes gives guests more opportunities to boost check averages.
Iliana de la Vega, the 2022 James Beard Best Chef in Texas Award winner and chef/owner of of El Naranjo in Austin, says her side dishes tempt diners to bump their ticket up by at least $9 or $10.
“Think what goes well with your menu. If you can implement having some of those [sides], it will increase the average ticket,” de la Vega advises.
Even dishes that don’t necessarily complement a specific dish can create a profitable bump, she adds. Her roasted coliflor al pastor is an example.
“It’s something spectacular that is delicious and it stands on its own,” de la Vega says.
Using low-cost vegetables as a base is one road to side dish profits, according to Sada Cervantes. “Choose a family of vegetables like cabbage or Brussels sprouts or kale. Very low cost. Make a good marinade or sauce or mayo to go with them and roast, grill, or char them,” she suggests.
A cauliflower dish on the menu at a restaurant Sada Cervantes works with is one example.
“Our star dish is a head of cauli- flower made with a chile morita mayo and roasted for an hour and served as the whole head. It sells for $15 and the cost is $2. We would sell close to 500 heads of cauliflower a week. That’s how you can make profitable side dishes. Vegetables are on a big rise right now — you can do so many things with them. With people turning vegetarian and vegan, chefs have got- ten very creative with using vegetables and can make great profit out of it.”
Offering side dishes ala carte is the most profitable strategy, she adds.
Williams agrees, and offers his take on just how that strategy can boost ticket averages.
“The way I look at it is, we have to be competitive in our prices, and we have to be fair with our prices,” he says, noting that today’s diners don’t want to see — and are reluctant to order — dishes in the $30 to $45 price range. Ala carte items like the meriendas at Momocho and El Carnicero, says Williams, can be the way to reach a $30+ total per person spend. The idea is to price main dishes that come with basic accompaniments at $20 or less, then offer sides too tempting to ignore.
“Differentiate yourself and put forth a [side] dish that people are going to notice, recognize, and then be excited for, because they haven’t read this on the menu at the last six places that they went,” suggests Williams. “You can charge a premium price, a fair price that people are willing to pay because they can’t get it anywhere else. People are willing to spend the money on something that’s different.”
More advice on successful, profit- able sides from Williams: “Use seasonal ingredients because the price is low and the quality is excellent. Then ask, ‘What is everybody else doing?’ And then don’t do that,” he suggests.
One word of caution about menuing side dishes comes from de la Vega.
“The problem with having too many side dishes is people sometimes, instead of ordering another entree, will go for several side dishes. And that is the tricky thing,” she says. “Like somebody will order just rice and the cauliflower. I’m like, hmm, that didn’t work for me.”
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