Mextapas began in his mother's kitchen. The recipes were taught to Julio by Doña Eva, his mum, the way Mexican food has always been passed on. Slowly. By watching. By tasting. By being asked to help. The mole simmering on her stove in Veracruz, is the same mole served at a Mextapas evening in Oxford. The rice cooked the way she cooks it. The salsas made by hand because that is the only way she makes them. These are not chef recipes. They are home recipes. The video shows her teaching him. That is where the food comes from.
Canela CafeIn October 2022, the family opened Canela Cafe in Boca del Rio, Veracruz — a small coffee shop and kitchen still run together today as a family. Canela is where the same recipes get cooked every day for our neighbours. When you eat a dish at a Mextapas evening, the same food is on a Canela menu in Veracruz. Same recipe, same hands, same kitchen tradition.
From Veracruz to the UKWhen Julio moved to the UK, he could not find the food he grew up with. The moles, the enchiladas, the picadas, the salsas made by hand, the regional dishes from Veracruz — none of it existed.
So he started small. Not with a restaurant. Not with investors. A pot of chipotle pork on the Home-Cooks platform. Strangers ordered it. They ordered again. The feedback was the same: this tastes different. This tastes real.
The Supper ClubIf people wanted the food this much, what would happen if you sat them down together and told them the story behind it? The answer was the supper club — intimate evenings in Oxford, dishes prepared from scratch, and conversations about where the food came from. Guests did not just eat. They listened. They came back. Then they brought their companies.
The MezcalSmall-batch bottles from Oaxaca, chosen because they finish the food. The supper club had its spirit.
What Mextapas IsNot a restaurant. Not chef-led. A home cook, with a family kitchen we can point to on a map, cooking the food his mother taught him for tables in the UK.
Doña Eva taught Julio her mole and her rice the way she learned them — at the stove, by hand, by watching the pot.
We opened Canela Cafe in October 2022 — a small coffee shop and kitchen in Boca del Rio that the family runs together. The recipes are older than the cafe; they come from home, from the family table where we all grew up cooking. Canela is just the public version of that kitchen.
That is what we mean by heritage. Not a story we wrote for a marketing brief. A real kitchen we can point to on a map, where the same dishes you eat at a Mextapas evening are served every day. The food and the family are verifiable, not narrative.
Book a Mextapas evening and taste real Mexico for yourself — or take a bottle of the mezcal home from the shop.
Recipes from our Veracruz kitchen, mezcal pairings, and dates released first to the list.