Estrella Naciente: How Chef Cosme Aguilar became a rising star—and earned one from Michelin

Queens, a borough famous for its authentic approximations of dishes from across the globe—in Astoria’s Greek tavernas, Flushing’s food malls and Little Tibet’s momo counters—it remains difficult to find serious mole or a quality tortilla.

Chef Cosme Aguilar has taken it upon himself to fill this gap, not only creating serious Mexican food, but earning a Michelin star in the process. 

There’s an inherent tension with the city’s, and the entire country’s, relationship with Mexican food. Although Tex-Mex reigns in the Southwest, and Californians take pride in the state’s ubiquitous taquerias, what most of us know as Tierra Azteca’s “authentic” cuisine is dumbed down, and a genre all its own—certainly not authentic Mexican. Generally, Mexican food in the United States ditches regionality and coddles the American palate with rich, exaggerated approximations. It relies on our population’s preference for all things fried and calorically extravagant. 

Understandably, this frustrates Aguilar. “It makes me mad when I go to a Mexican restaurant and they make me something that’s not good,” he says. “They lose the way we cook [in Mexico]. We don’t put lettuce in tacos. We don’t add cream. They’ve adapted to American taste preferences.” 

It’s late summer and we’re seated at a small table outside the restaurant’s basement kitchen, where the boss does his paperwork. 

Aguilar explains his mission to bring real Mexican cuisine to New York. “When we opened Casa Enrique I said, ‘I’m going to cook for Mexicans. And people who appreciate Mexican food. I don’t want to cook for people who want to come and have a burrito or nachos. It’s not my type of food. I don’t want to lose the authenticity.”

Aguilar grew up in Chiapas, and emigrated from Mexico in 1998. “Like everybody, I was broke. And I came to the States to have a better life.” Before leaving Mexico, he lived in Puebla and Mexico City, and thus, his restaurant transcends regional focus for a wider, national approach to the country’s cuisine. Aguilar followed his brother Luis (who declined to be interviewed for this story), to Café Henri. From porter, to prep cook, to sous, he worked his way up the ranks. Fourteen years later, they opened Casa Enrique together; Luis is the manager and mixologist, and the elder Aguilar, the chef.

Despite his purely Mexican upbringing, and his distaste for America’s Mexican food, Aguilar contends that authenticity is derived from the ingredients employed, and the observance of traditions, rather than a cook’s background. Alongside Mexican Americans, Aguilar’s kitchen staff of roughly 20 is made up of Colombians, Ecuadorians, Peruvians and a Haitian.

He recalls,“When I was cooking French, and someone would come into the restaurant and say ‘Oh, a Mexican is cooking French? I don’t think so.’ I [would think] ‘OK, so try my food.’ I wasn’t born in France, but I was trained in French.”