Oloyo
Ask anyone on the streets of Dallas to name their top 3 cuisines, and 9/10 of them would name “Mexican” as one of them. We here in Dallas think we know Mexican food, but the truth is we don’t. Many here have never had a real Mexican enchilada, for example, where the tortilla is heated slightly, dipped in a guajillo sauce, lightly toasted with oil, rolled with chicken, cheese & onion then pan fried so that the outer layer gets slightly crispy and the sauce a little charred. It is served with cabbage and crema mexicana and is an out of this world experience.
This is real Mexican – interesting flavors, complex techniques and a multi-step process to bring the love of a mother onto your plate. This, along with introducing you to the magic of maize, is what Oloyo is trying to do in an elevated presentation. In my interpretation, Oloyo is trying to showcase that real Mexican cuisine can rival French or Italian in its complexity and should be taken as a contender in the fine dining corridor.
While the idea is there, and quite delicious I may add, the aggregation of little mistakes here and there yielded a somewhat poorly executed concept. While they have the potential to be a dining destination in the heart of Dallas, it seemed that every step of my delicious culinary experience at Oloyo was met with one little, off-center, technically flawed component. It was one point here, 2 points there, etc; the meal was never abhorrent nor was there anything that did not taste great – but for what this establishment is trying to say, and who they are trying to compete with, I believe they just missed the mark.
I tried 3 items when I visited, the Pork Tamales, the Tostada Raspada, and Duck Mole. I paired, or tried to pair, each course with the Baja Viognier, a shot of El Mayor blanco on the rocks, and a sparkling rose from Penedes, respectively. All matched beautifully with my selection of food, when delivered in time. The Viognier had beautiful acidity and notes of peach and honey/honeysuckle that helped bring out the herbatiousness of the pipian sauce. The El Mayor helped quite a bit with tempering the overpowering grapefruit in the Tostada Raspada along with highlighting the earthiness of the Tostada itself and the tomatoes. The sparkling wine was not delivered until I had the final bite of my entre, so from that one bite I can tell you that the raspberry palate played with the lusciously toasty and delightfully bitter Mole exceptionally well, it’s a shame I wasn’t able to fully enjoy the pairing.
“What was for dessert?” you may ask? Well, if they had actually made the nieve de pinole (or pinole [a type of corn] ice cream) – I would be able to tell you. The server mentioned that they ran out when I ordered it, but I was sitting at the bar and not one nieve went out (it’s an open concept kitchen.) My assumption was that they didn’t make any that day or the batch wasn’t the best. It happens when you focus on only the highest quality ingredients, but the server should have just said Chef didn’t feel the nieve was up to par so we 86’d it.
The Masa from the tamales were out of this world – my God I am still thinking about it. Masa for tamales is a very hard technique to nail. You have maize that is naturally dense and even when you grind it, it is still dense. You add broth to lighten it up, it is still dense. Then you add lard, but you must aerate the lard and then try to incorporate it with a dense substance that can very easily crush the air out of the whipped lard if you’re not careful. It is a very difficult process to pull off even with corn flour designed for Tamales.
The resulting Masa should be light, rich, and with just the slightest amount of grit to remind you of the corn it came from – chef Olivia nailed it and the taste of the heirloom corn used came through with beautiful precision - earthy, vegetal and sweet… but the pork was a little dry. I kept having to spoon the pipian sauce over the pork repeatedly to combat the dryness. Pork within a tamale should never be dry, sauce or no sauce. The pickled watermelon rind was also a delight as it gave much needed contrast to the rich dish as was the roasted squash; however, in the plating of the dish they had the veg at the bottom to showcase the tamale which made consuming and getting one perfect bite a challenge.
I understand the reasoning behind that, but what it ultimately did was make the dish a little difficult to eat. You have the soft Masa that falls apart when you touch it with your fork (yay!!) so you do a scooping motion, but then you have the hard veg at the bottom so then you have pierce it with the prongs of the fork, which is not ideal if each part of a dish needs each other.
The Tostada Raspada was the next course as I felt something refreshing was warranted before the duck entrée. The Tostada was incredible, meaning the shell itself. The “Raspada” made sure each nook and cranny was crispy which helped to accent the slightly acidic maize used for this application, thanks to their in-house nixtamalization. Again, the earthy and sweet combo of the maize came through, which is quite hard to do with a Tostada as oftentimes you only taste the oil.
As a complete dish, however, it doesn’t work. The tomatoes were too underripe to counteract the unchecked bitterness from the grapefruit jam and the requeson was too mild to help the tomatoes resulting in a very bitter and acidic combo that overpowered the lovely Tostada.
The dish also sits on some requeson which essentially glues the Tostada to the plate thus making it a little tricky to eat. Do I use force to pick it up even though it’s glued a little to the plate and risk tomatoes flying everywhere as they were merely sliced in half? Do I use a fork and knife and risk shattering the Tostada? Ultimately, I decided to do the latter until there was only a third left then picked it up and finished it off.
Lastly, the Duck Mole. This was probably the best Mole I have had in Dallas. Mole, being a mix of nuts, spices, chocolate, and other herbs and mix-ins, can rival any French sauce in my opinion, go argue with a wall. Oloyo produces a true Mole, bitter, rich, umami adjacent with a little acidity and the slightest hint of sweetness, it makes your palate sing. Paired with the perfectly confit duck, served in a square of shredded leg meat and seared to make one side extra crispy, the Mole found a wonderful match.
The addition of the escabeche was very much needed to add a little levity to such an indulgent dish. “The dish works very well, so why put the escabeche on the side?” I thought to myself. In a normal Mexican kitchen, you put the accompaniment on the side, but in fine dining – you want to have everything on the plate so when someone digs in, they can taste the Chef’s full vision instead of just a partiality. This was an odd decision to me, as was the amount of Mole to duck; I don’t care about portion size as long as it makes sense, but either having an ounce or two more of the Mole or an ounce or 2 less of the duck would have been the perfect amount given how both Mole and duck need each other. Towards the end, I found myself using the Mole so sparingly that by the time I had my last bite, I barely had any Mole to contrast with the duck.
The success of the dish made the technical flaw of an undercooked tortilla that much more noticeable. The tortilla had no “leopard spots” on it yielding a tortilla that did not have the Maillard reaction needed to elevate the Masa into what a tortilla should be. While that critique may seem nitpicky – the concept of Oloyo, from my interpretation, is a love letter to Mexican food with Masa being the star.
As a highlight without blemish, their cocktail program is a homerun. Giving credence to agave spirits, they really make you think about the limitlessness of this humble libation when handled by innovative and creative hands. By far, the standout was the white negroni they have on the menu. Admittedly, I am not a mezcal fan and never really have been; I find that the smokiness can often overpower and veer off into “tar” territory, but the para de sufrir was delectable. The delicate smoke played so well with the coconut cordial yielding a well-balanced bitter but off-sweet palate that would bring together negroni haters and lovers alike; I may be back for that cocktail alone.
Overall, it was a good effort from a clearly talented chef and team, but I am afraid that if they want to change the upper crust of Dallas’ mind on what real Mexican can be – they need to execute at the level of their competitors. We don’t live in a vacuum, the average Dallas diner will compare Oloyo with its competitors; the reality is that if Oloyo is going to charge Mamani prices, the expectation will be Mamani level, and they just did not deliver from what I experienced. I want Oloyo to succeed; as a city, Dallas needs more chef owners that aren’t imported from LA, Chicago or NYC so I am rooting for them, but I can only relay what I experienced and not what I wish the experience had been.
3.5/5 Stars
