El Rincon del Maiz

El Rincón del Maíz is a family restaurant on East McKinney Street in Denton, Texas, serving the food of southeastern Mexico. It keeps two menus side by side: a traditional one and a vegan one.

Chef Michell Torres comes from Villahermosa, the capital of Tabasco, where her family has lived for generations. She taught herself to cook from the recipes of her mother and grandmother and was always the one who cooked for family feasts. Her husband Carlos Guillén pushed her for years to open a restaurant, and in the autumn of 2021 the couple opened the first El Rincón del Maíz in a former Sonic drive-in on Belt Line Road in Garland, with their son Gerardo helping in the dining room. When that building grew too small, the family moved to a larger space in Denton in July 2023.

Corn comes first, as the name, the corner of maize, suggests. The tortillas are flavored with pureed chiles and other ingredients, from cilantro or nopal to mango-habanero, and one is even made with chocolate to go with a chicken mole taco. Pastor negro gets its dark color from charred chiles, and cochinita pibil from the Yucatán is pork cooked with orange and achiote. Plantain tostadas come topped with pickled chicken.

Torres built the vegan menu herself after she began cooking without meat at home. Tacos of hibiscus flower and cauliflower were among her first successes, and quesabirria is made with jackfruit and vegan cheese. Vegan cochinita pibil also uses jackfruit, chorizo is made from chickpeas, and chicharrón de coco is coconut cooked in salsa verde. A mushroom tamal comes steamed in a banana leaf. Within a year of the opening, Bon Appétit named the Garland restaurant one of the 50 best new restaurants in America, singling out the vegan menu.