Lanie Bayless and Meagan O'Connor
By Natalia Otero
Topolobampo is a Chicago culinary landmark and the best known of Chef Rick Bayless’ many fine Mexican restaurants. Today the restaurant thrives under the leadership of veteran Chef de Cuisine Meagan O’Connor and a mostly-women management team.
Topolobampo, winner of the James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurant of the Year in 2017, is known for its refined dishes and meticulous pairings with wines and agave spirits. The culinary staff never stop innovating -- every six to eight weeks, a brand-new tasting menu is designed and a dish is never repeated.
el Restaurante writer Natalia Otero spoke with O’Connor and General Manager Lanie Bayless to better understand the creative process, challenges, and philosophy behind a restaurant that constantly reinvents its offerings.
From which regions of Mexico do the recipes come?
Chef O’Connor: The truth is that they don’t come from one single region. Since our menu changes completely every six to eight weeks, each one tells a unique story. Sometimes it’s dedicated to one region, while other times it blends inspirations from several.
I’m very curious about this creative process of changing the menu so often. How do you create it, and what are the main challenges?
Chef O’Connor: We start with brainstorming sessions that involve the entire chef team—Chef Rick [Bayless], myself, our sous chef Jesús [Maldonado], pastry chef Jennifer [Enyart], everyone. At the beginning of the year, we plan the themes for six menus, and then each one gets its own brainstorming meeting.
If the menu is inspired by one of our research trips to Mexico—say Mexico City—then we have a clear idea of the recipes and dishes we want to create. If it’s a broader theme, we spend longer refining the dishes, bouncing ideas off each other.
Yeah, it’s designed that way, and then there are several testings. The first one will be myself, our sous chef Jesús, and our pastry chef Jennifer. We all prepare different parts of the menu and present them first to Rick, and then we have a couple more testings after that. Later, we hold tastings that involve our wine and spirits team, led by Juliana [Arquilla] and Jill [Gubesch].
And yes—by the way, I don’t know if you caught that—most of the team are women, something we are very proud of.
That’s awesome. All the creative process sounds very intellectual and dedicated.
Chef O’Connor: So that’s kind of the whole creative process. It is very long, and it almost takes as much time to create the menu as to keep it on the menu. That’s almost two months before the menu goes into action.
The pairings are also crucial—not only with wine, but also with agave spirits like mezcal, tequila, and sotol.
Lanie Bayless: I can speak a little bit about the pairing options because we offer four different options when you arrive. Straight wine pairing, or agave pairing. We use sotol, tequila, mezcal, whatever we think pairs well with the dish. Straight agave pairing. And then we have another option where you can go back and forth — the first course could be wine, and the second could be a spirit — for those who want a little bit of both. And we recently started a non-alcoholic pairing with non-alcoholic cocktails.
Once you define the menu, how do you handle sourcing ingredients?
Chef O’Connor: That requires a lot of planning. For example, in our current menu we source rockfish and tuna from Ensenada, Mexico. We have to give them four weeks advance notice if we are going to get 50 pounds of rockfish.
For other products I’m proud to say that we work with local products. The backbone of the ingredients at the restaurant are locally sourced products. Our fruits, vegetables and herbs come from local farmers in Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and several others in the Midwest. We work directly with them, rather than with a middle man or a large supplier. Here, the farmer comes and delivers directly to us.
This is the most exciting thing: we have our own little minifarm at the restaurant. We have our own rooftop and greenhouse garden. So we actually get to source, especially our herbs, like hoja santa and epazote, which are otherwise hard to find here in Chicago.
Lanie Bayless: Our chefs have worked with farmers to grow specific Mexican ingredients, like habanero peppers or even huitlacoche. Not only does this benefit us, but it also helps farmers expand their markets and ecosystems.
That must elevate the quality of the dishes, too.
Chef O’Connor: Absolutely. For example, we work with one farmer in Wisconsin that now specializes in cultivating huitlacoche thanks to Chef Rick’s encouragement.
It sounds like teamwork is essential in all of this creative process.
Chef O’Connor: It is definitely a team effort because there is literally no way I could do this all by myself. There are a lot of touches and garnishes, a lot of sauce work, a lot going on with every dish.
Chef O’Connor generously shared her récipe for Baja Style Pinenut Pipian with readers. Click here to read it.
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