Salsa A La Salsa

Lorenzo Azria, who owns Salsa a la Salsa with his wife Elvia, and runs it with the help of plenty of family: his daughter waits tables during the day, his son-in-law at night, and the youngest kids help when they can. Lorenzo grew up in the Mexican village of Popo Park, near the town of Amecameca, which is on the side of those legendary volcanoes, Popocatepeti and Ixaccihuati, which are visible from Mexico City."Mixiotes is an ancient, pre-Columbian way of cooking," explained Lorenzo, when I talked to him on the phone for this story, "but they used to use the outer skin of maguey leaves. Then, when I grew up, my mom and her family put cactus leaves in everything, because they grow in our backyards." One day Lorenzo saw a recipe for mixiotes made in aluminum foil - which he thinks is horrible, because it makes the food taste like metal 00 and got to tinkering, and a few decades later we've got this marvelous dish in Minneapolis.Lorenzo had plenty of time to tinker. After leaving the side of the volcano he spent most of the 1970's '80s, and '90s in Los Angeles hotels and catering companies, where he married Elvia (sister to the founder of the Tacos Morelos empire), learned French cooking techniques, watched the California Cuisine revolution, and invented all sorts of dishes that combined authentic Southwestern tastes and techniques with the low-cal, high-taste needs of Los Angeles's high-octane power-players. Lorenzo says he has cooked for Julia Roberts and Jackie Collins, and just ask him about the things he has catered for Danny DeVito's Fourth of July festivities.