This New Chef’s Counter Is Way More Fun Than Formal

“The reason why I wanted to win the game was so I don’t have to play the game anymore,” says chef Michael Diaz de Leon from behind the small chef’s counter inside Molino Chido, the Mexico City-inspired taqueria he opened with Uncle and Hop Alley owner Tommy Lee inside the Stanley Marketplace in November.

Following a popular new trend in the city, the buzzy spot recently added an $85, five-course prix fixe experience dubbed Más Chido. Diaz de Leon is clearly having a good time serving just a few guests a special menu that the chef describes as “an extension of what we do in the dining room. It’s for us to be able to keep exploring masa in different ways, also locality and local farms, a little bit of fermentation. It’s just some fun ideas to get out of our heads.”

Diaz de Leon surprised a lot of local diners when he left his role as executive chef of Bruto shortly after it became one the first restaurants in the state to earn a Michelin star. While he’s clearly proud of that accomplishment, “if I wouldn’t have left I never would have opened my own place,” he notes. “I wouldn’t have the opportunity to fall in love with cooking again, to learn the lessons that I needed to learn to grow as a person.”

Recently, he was among the sixteen contestants on the debut season of Padma Lakshmi’s new cooking competition show, America’s Culinary Cup. While he didn’t take home the $1 million prize, he seems fully content with where life has led him so far. “I have no desire to get more stars. I have no desire to have twenty restaurants,” he says. “I want to use [Molino Chido] as a vehicle to be able to do the cool shit I want to do, like travel and cook and connect.”

What to Expect at Más Chido

Connection is clearly central to Más Chido, where a maximum of five guests are seated directly in front of the busy kitchen. On a recent visit, assistant manager/beverage director Javier Portillo begins the evening by introducing the entire kitchen staff and kicking things off with the first pairing of the meal, a play on a strawberry rhubarb tart complete with graham crackers and spiked with Jamaican rum. “It almost feels like a dessert in a glass,” he says, and he’s spot-on.

Diners can opt for boozy ($55 per person) pairings that mix up offerings such as cocktails, wine, agave spirits and sake, or N/A ($45) pairings; either way, they’re designed thoughtfully.

Portillo previously worked at the Wash Park location of Tommy Lee’s Uncle; he’s a passionate addition to the Molino Chido team who is quick to note that nothing here is done by one person — everything is a team effort.

The dessert-like strawberry rhubarb cocktail is matched with a dessert-looking sope that isn’t actually sweet at all. Made with yellow corn from the Ute tribe in southwestern Colorado (“the workhorse of Molino Chido,” Diaz de Leon notes), the sope itself is steamed, then fried and filled with lightly fermented huckleberries and mole rosa made with beets, figs, and koji. Sitting on top are thick, crunchy slices of raw haruki turnips from Esoterra Culinary Garden and a smattering of scarlet begonias.

Earthy with building heat from two types of chiles and a playful mix of textures, the dish is a memorable start to a meal that’s well-paced and portioned. These five courses are designed to leave you full and satisfied, and the experience delivers on that promise.

Next up is an unexpected take on momo (the Tibetan and Nepali dumplings), made with white Sonoran flour from the family-owned Jones Farms Organic in the San Luis Valley. The hefty dumpling is filled with curry potatoes and arrives in a bath of tangy tamarind birria with a tangle of potato frites (made with Jones Farms potatoes) on top. While the wine pairing for this course is a lovely acidic Chenin Blanc, the N/A option, a Roma tomato and berry milk punch, brings the ideal refreshing note to the party.

That’s followed by a smoky, grilled blue corn tortilla that’s the base for a play on a surf-and-turf tlayudita that includes a thin layer of cheese, seafood mole, bison chorizo, kombu-cured scallops, and Haykin Cider “caviar.”

While that course, like those before it, delivers interesting flavor and texture combinations, the final savory course — a beautifully cooked strip loin with a sweet achiote and sour orange glazes — feels one note. The glaze is reminiscent of a sweet barbecue sauce, and a tomato vinaigrette supposedly paired with the butter-basted cabbage alongside seems to be MIA. That’s unfortunate, as a bit of acid would really help balance things out.

Not that this is a meal-ruining course by any means. For me, part of the fun of menus like this is getting a taste of culinary ideas that haven’t been tested to the point of perfection.

Plus, it all ends very, very well, with a dessert that combines flan and miso chocolate cake.

The Appeal of the Casual Tasting Menu

The rise of prix fixe meals that feel more like an intimate dinner party than a Chef’s Table tryout is a welcome trend.

Over at chef Doug Rankin’s Petit Chelou inside Hop Alley, guests are encouraged to interact. “This is not like a normal tasting menu where you feel like you can’t talk to me the entire time, or we can’t laugh,” Rankin says. “I think that’s something that happens a lot around town, so we’re trying to be the anti-tasting menu tasting menu.”

Petit Chelou succeeds at creating an atmosphere that feels unstuffy, but the price tag is still special occasion-only tier for most, at $125 per person for around eight courses.

Even at Michelin-starred Margot, where Justin Fulton and his team wear crisp chef’s whites and are armed with tweezers, a disco ball hangs above the counter seats “because this is a party,” Fulton notes with a sly smile. The upbeat playlist echoes that intention, but again, a twelve-course meal for $175 is an investment. (Margot also offers a five-course chef’s tasting in its main dining room for $95 per person that is a more accessible option, though you don’t get the same front-seat view of the action.)

High-end tasting menus are on the rise in the Mile High — soon, chef Johnny Curiel, whose hits include the state’s only à la carte Michelin-starred restaurants, Alma Fonda Fina and Mezcaleria Alma, will get into the game with the opening of Milpero (a rebrand of its original moniker, Maize), where the 18-course experience will run $225.

But at Más Chido, the financial stakes — and time commitment — are much lower, while the culinary creativity and skill is on par with its peers. “We like to keep it fun,” Javier Portillo explains. And we like what this team is doing to make its chef’s counter experience accessible to more diners.

Más Chido and Molino Chido are located inside Stanley Marketplace ,at 2501 Dallas Street in Aurora. The prix fixe menu is available only on Fridays and Saturdays and can be booked via OpenTable; for more information, visit molinochido.com.