“We ran out of space,” he says with a little laugh.
But while it’s easy to imagine the space limitations of a food hall spot, the real reason he felt too crowded there isn’t necessarily simple, but it is compelling. Since opening Sureste last year, Henry expanded beyond his initial vision of providing St. Louis diners with the traditional dishes of the Yucatán, an area many in the St. Louis region may be less familiar with, culinarily speaking.
“We started selling our tortillas and masa wholesale to a few other restaurants and doing some retail,” Henry says. “By trying to run basically a second half of the business out of what's already a small space for a restaurant, we ran out of space.”
He found himself looking for a commissary that he could run the retail operation out of — but instead, along with brother Jeff, found 5005 South Kingshighway. The Southampton neighborhood space, which used to hold Antonio’s Market Bistro, came with a different vision, but one that was still all about the tortillas.
The result of that new direction is El Molino del Sureste, a multi-concept restaurant and retail space that is set to open on Saturday, September 9. During the day, El Molino will operate a traditional mill, or molino, to grind corn for retail and wholesale fresh masa and products such as tortillas, chips, tostadas and more. By night, the space will transform into a restaurant that, like Sureste, will showcase traditional Yucatán dishes as well as Henry spin on the region’s cuisine.
Henry says he’d had the concept in the back of his mind for a while but that it unfurled into the current concept quickly. Everything, in fact, came together fast. The brothers signed the lease on the space in March and started working on making it a reality. That meant dealing with things like inspections and permits as well as making the space, which was turnkey, their own by painting and decorating it.
That also meant diving into the menu without delay.
“I already had a pretty good idea of what I wanted here,” Henry says, referring to the main dining space. “It doesn't all fit on [the menu] at the same time, so it's going to be rotation, we can rotate through different things. Then the [bar side] menu over there, it's a little bit more fun. There's some very obscure traditional things on that menu. Then there'll be some things that are less traditional, where we use that side as a good opportunity to play around with traditional techniques, but maybe in a more contemporary format.”
As an example of a traditional offering that he intends to serve as-is, Henry points to the papadzules, an egg dish composed of chopped, hard-boiled eggs that are rolled in a tortilla with herbs and topped with tomato sauce. He compares it to pizza with eggs, saying that it “tastes really good.” He adds, “As a kid, I hated eggs, and this is the only way I’d eat them.”
One traditional dish he decided to play with is the culce tradicional con queso locales, or a spread of fruit candies with cheese. Henry’s version uses papaya that is, like masa, lightly nixtamalized, which strengthens the fruit so it doesn’t turn to mush when submerged in hot sugar.
“It holds its shape, and it takes on just the slightest taste from the nixtamalization as well,” he says. He pairs that with cheeses sourced from local creameries. “It’s kind of our Mexico cheese plate.”
Jeff Henry is running the front of the house and the bar. He says the bar program will focus on Mexican agave spirits and sugarcane spirits like rums, with drinks that focus on citrus (which he says is often grown in the Yucatán), hibiscus and tamarind. The bar will also have a limited selection of beers and wines.
“I'm just trying to evoke some of the flavors of our childhood, flavors that are familiar to Mexicans,” Jeff says. “Without a doubt, the main driver is Alex. This is just looking to complement it.”
Anyone who tries a fresh tortilla, Henry says, is going to be blown away by the difference. For one thing, they have a simple ingredient list compared to their packaged kindred.
“A fresh corn tortilla, if you stretch it, it’s just as stretchy as a flour tortilla,” Henry says. “And it's nice and soft, and it tastes like corn.”
Henry is looking forward to sharing that traditional tortilla — and everything else that El Molino has to offer — with St. Louis eaters.
“I think that's something that just hasn't really been very available in the St. Louis area,” he says. “I’m anxious to get open.”
“I'm definitely excited to see what Alex can do,” Jeff adds. “We're kind of uniquely positioned, having been raised with one foot in two worlds ... to be kind of like cultural ambassadors.”
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