First Person: Martha Doyle – Bringing Fine Mexican Cuisine to Scotland

June 6, 2019

11:04 AM

Editor’s Note: Martha Doyle owns El Tajin Mexican Restaurant in Montrose, Scotland. She was interviewed by el Restaurante publisher Ed Avis.

I was a single mother with two daughters living in Veracruz, Mexico when I met my husband, who is Scottish. We planned to live in Mexico, but we had to leave because of the violence. We did not move straightaway to Scotland – first we moved to Singapore, where we lived for two years.

I had worked for 20 years as a teacher in a primary school, but when we arrived in Singapore in 2006, I suddenly found myself with nothing to do. I was doing some documentation in the Mexican embassy and this lady from the Secretary of Cultural Affairs told me she was craving some Mexican food. By then I had located the Mexican grocery stores in Singapore, so I invited her to our flat and I made a buffet for her. She was over the moon! She explained to me that when there were cultural events in Singapore, they had to bring in chefs from Mexico. She asked me, “Would you like to do that?” I said, “I’m not a chef, but if you trust me I will.”

In Mexico I grew up with my mother and grandmother making big amounts of food, and that’s how I learned to cook. The lady at the embassy asked me to make a one-week buffet around Mexican Independence Day in the Shangri La Hotel in Singapore. That was so successful that soon I was cooking for other events and all sorts of clubs. So that was the beginning of my second career.

Then my husband’s contract in Singapore finished, so we moved to Scotland in 2008. What they had for Mexican food was nachos, burritos and fajitas. I started teaching Spanish and cooking for some clubs in town, and I showed them that there’s more to Mexican food than that. When my husband retired three years ago, we started looking for a location for a restaurant. Someone offered to let me use their coffee shop for a pop-up. So we did a pop-up there and it was fully booked for a week! We did four pop-ups like that, but it was a hassle loading up the van, unloading it in the coffee shop, then leaving it the way we had found it every day. So we decided we needed a permanent location.

One of my Spanish students said he had a commercial property that was available. As soon as we walked through the charming courtyard leading to the arched doorway, it reminded me of a hacienda in Mexico. We fell in love immediately. This was us.

We opened the restaurant in 2017, on Father’s Day. At the beginning it was hard, it was more about educating people about the Mexican cuisine. I tried to bring in original dishes from all over Mexico to Scotland, and in the beginning they didn’t understand the concept. At one point we had a Mexican Christmas menu, and they said, “You have Christmas in Mexico?” There were so many theories they had wrong about Mexicans and Mexican food! But little by little they put down those ideas, and now we have a good reputation in this town.

Our most popular dish is cochinita pibil. Another that is really popular is cabrito al pastor. Also chipotle prawns and pesca ala veracruzana. We change our menu regularly because we like to go with the seasons. I buy local, I trade with the farmers. One farm just five miles away produces goat, and other farm 10 miles away produces goose. So at Christmas we have goose instead of turkey.

I have a local supplier who imports produce from Mexico, such as chile poblano, jicama and cactus. I dare say, no other restaurant in the UK has fresh cactus. It’s been well accepted. Every week I have to order a box of cactus from Mexico because the people ask for the nopales salad.

The majority of our other supplies are available locally, such as good tomatoes, white onions, jalapeno and cilantro. Sometimes we have to walk the extra mile, but we can find everything. However, finding Mexican beer and tequila has been a challenge. I like to support mezcal, and not everyone has knowledge about that. We can find it in Scotland from some wine importers. We found good mezcal and tequila at a tasting session, but they weren’t in the importer’s catalog. They said they would need more demand for it to import it, so we started asking for it. We have a trolley specially designated for mezcal and tequila – we offer it as an aperitif or digestif.

The only Mexican wine we can find is LA Cetto. Our house red wine is the LA Cetto Malbec, and it’s very well accepted. We have all of the LA Cetto wines, and they are good sellers. They sell better than the other wines we carry.

I prefer to make our tortillas. During the holidays I can get Maseca and I make our own tortillas or empanadas or picadas, which is a tortilla pinched on the borders and topped with lard and salsa and cheese. It’s another specialty from my hometown.

But the problem I have in the kitchen is helpers – we have no helpers. So I often have to buy tortillas. But they’re not supermarket tortillas. There is one company in London that makes them every day and sends them to Scotland.

It is difficult to find kitchen help here. For the front of the house, I have queues of people waiting. But working in the kitchen is harder. I have to make sure the kitchen staff are meeting my standards – I tell them this is a fine restaurant, and I like to do a presentation on the dishes, not just throw the food on the plate. And they have to follow all the health and safety regulations, of course. It’s difficult, so sometimes I end up doing all the jobs on my own for weeks.

This restaurant has been my projection of my love of my country. I love where I grew up, so with this restaurant I try to project how beautiful Mexico is, not only in the lands and fields and products, but also the food and traditions.

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