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Queso fundido with pork chorizo
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Mara Mara cocktail with gin, Licor 43, passionfruit, pineapple oleo and lime
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The Taco Baja, featuring crispy fish, roasted jalapeno aioli, picked red cabbage, cilantro and salsa macha
“I always kind of say, mine is the opposite of a chef story,” Mexico City native Danny Mena says of his journey with cooking.
The self-proclaimed former picky eater didn’t try mushrooms until he was 17, and growing up, he would carefully remove the pieces of ancho pork from posole, leaving just the hominy and broth of the stew.
“We were not a food-obsessed house, and my dad never cooked, and my mom cooked for necessity ... there was no me hanging out in the back of kitchens,” he adds.
Conejo partner and Executive Chef Danny Mena
But in the past 20 years, Mena has gone from making sopes — tortilla-like cornmeal cakes with toppings — for friends in college to opening two successful New York City dining ventures and writing a cookbook celebrating the flavors and restaurants of Mexico City. Now, after relocating with his family to Richmond, Mena will serve as a partner and executive chef at Conejo, the latest concept from Big Kitchen Hospitality.
BKH's owners are husband-and-wife team John and Susan Davenport and Jeff Grant, who are responsible for Tazza Kitchen's six locations, including three in the Richmond region and three in the Carolinas.
Set to debut next week in the Westhampton Commons development at 5800 Patterson Ave. with a Mexico City-inspired menu and a mezcal-heavy cocktail list, the new eatery will feature a sprawling patio, lunch and dinner service, and even Monday hours.
An avid skateboarder who also happened to be good at math, after high school, Mena landed in America at Virginia Tech to study engineering.
“It was a pretty crazy contrast to go from Mexico City to Blacksburg,” he says with a laugh. “It was intense, especially the first six months of a whole new culture and people.”
Thousands of miles away from home, he began to connect with his heritage by hosting dinner parties. After moving to New York City post-college, his fate would be sealed after reading Anthony Bourdain’s "Kitchen Confidential," becoming close friends with a Brazilian chef and deciding to attend the French Culinary Institute.
“I started working in nice kitchens, and an opportunity arose to open a little restaurant that started as a pop-up, and at the time the pop-up trend didn’t even exist; we called it a 'recurring culinary event,' ” he says, laughing.
The event evolved into a nine-year run as Hecho en Dumbo in Manhattan, followed by La Loncheria in Brooklyn.
"When we first opened, people would say, ‘We can tell people cook this with heart,' and I’ve always kind of taken that to heart,” Mena says. “Let’s try to continue to cook where people can tell there’s emotions and love behind the food we’re doing."
In 2019, he penned “Made in Mexico: The Cookbook: Classic and Contemporary Recipes From Mexico City," a collection of dishes inspired by different Mexico City restaurants. It caught the attention of the Davenports, who were looking to introduce a new concept of their own.
“John loved his cookbook and saw [Mena] went to Virginia Tech and reached out to him,” Susan says. “That was probably 18 months ago.”
A series of Zoom meetings, phone calls and ultimately a trip together to Mexico City, Baja and Oaxaca followed, the trio reveling in the smells and flavors while crafting a menu for the forthcoming Richmond restaurant.
“It’s been a very organic process,” Susan says of their collaboration with Mena. “He knows so much about Mexican cuisine, partly from growing up in Mexico City and from the research and writing of his cookbook."
The soul of the menu at Conejo is fresh masa.
“In Mexican food, that is the foundation, the corn,” Mena says. “It's important to have the corn tortilla as our base and to really showcase that.”
Sourcing from small family farms in Mexico, Conejo will mill heirloom corn daily to make fresh masa for tortillas, chips, tostadas and sopes using a three-step process called nixtamalization. Richmond's Sub Rosa Bakery, a member of the Common Grain Alliance, is helping the restaurant source Sonoran wheat from a farm in Pennsylvania, in addition to milling the flour.
“The word conejo means rabbit in Spanish, but it also refers to a type of heirloom corn we will be using for our tortillas,” Susan explains. “There is also a Mexican folk tale, 'The 400 Conejos,' about the divine rabbits who are the gods of agave spirits.”
Speaking of spirits, the soul of the cocktail menu at Conejo is mezcal.
“The majority of cocktails will be tequila and mezcal,” says Mena, who also co-owns Pelotón de la Muerte, a mezcal company in Mexico.
Straying a bit off the conventional course, Conejo's cochinita pibil, a Yucatan peninsula staple traditionally made with marinated pork wrapped in banana leaves and slow-roasted underground, will feature tuna, while a pepita mole is intended to add depth, and mint chimichurri to liven, the restaurant's vegetarian roasted broccoli taco.
Diners can also find campechano, tacos made with grilled steak, chorizo and chicharrones, which Mena describes as a salt bomb and the ultimate hangover cure. The short rib steak tacos, an ode to simplicity seasoned only with salt and a dash of pepper, are considered by the chef to be a menu standout.
“You don’t need a whole lot sometimes,” he says. “You don’t have to have what I call 'vertical tacos' in the sense where they have to be a tower of one thing after another after another.”
Other menu items will include sopes, rotisserie meats, ceviches, salads and a variety of classic Mexican antojitos. Describing the dishes as a slightly contemporary version of Mexican and Mexico City cuisine, Mena says, “It’s not modern or new age, but kind of what is happening. You see this a lot in Mexico, playing with different dishes that kind of change a little bit of expectations. I’ve told my wife that, hopefully, this is the best food I’ve ever made because, [I've] been making food, and it keeps evolving and keeps changing."
Conejo will be open Monday and Tuesday from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. for lunch and 4:30 to 9 p.m. for dinner and Wednesday through Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. for lunch and 4:30 to 10 p.m. for dinner.
