Lakeview restaurant Southport and Irving (SIP) kicked off the first dinner in their Unity and Diversity series on February 23. Inspired by the melting pot of America itself, owner Vivek Sehgal hopes to bring people together over the things we love, universally: our mother’s cooking, our grandmother’s recipes, our family’s traditions. The inaugural dinner featured Berta Navarro as the grandmother-in-charge, showcasing her own grandmother’s recipes and traditional dishes from her home state of Jalisco, Mexico.
Southport and Irving’s manager, Ardit Dizdari, deftly slices up limes for the traditional margaritas the team is preparing for cocktail hour, all while giving feedback and instructions to his staff on the meal service.In the kitchen, chef Berta Navarro (right) guides cooks Arturo (left), Andres (center), on the presentation of her dishes. Navarro planned the traditional dinner based on recipes from her grandmother and the typical foods of her home-state, Jalisco. Her grandmother was the one who taught her how to cook.Andres, cook, proudly shows off the poblano tamales he prepared earlier that evening. They look very different to how his own mother made them, he said, but he is happy that Navarro taught him the recipe. He hopes to make them for his mother one day too.A line of sopes de papa con chorizo – crisp potato and corn flour fritters topped with spicy pork sausage – awaits service in the kitchen.Sopes de papa con chorizo, garnished here with lettuce, salsa, and a taste of sour cream to balance the spice. The crunch of the potato and corn fritter makes for a messy, but addictive, first bite.The kitchen, bright and bustling throughout the evening, seems worlds away from the cozy, dimly lit restaurant where over fifty patrons gathered to celebrate unity in diversity through food. The food and drinks keep coming all night, and the live music filters in and out of the swinging doors.A sudden addition to the menu: a traditional Mexican soup. The soup comes with a tray of garnishes, including the cilantro, thinly slivers of cabbage and radish, chopped red onions, and corn tortilla pictured. Cooks Andres and Christian spoke fondly about eating their own family’s variations on this stew.As the dinner winds down, the margaritas keep coming. Dinner guests enjoy two varieties: a traditional margarita, and a tamarind margarita, pictured here.Chef Yoli Martinez, who assisted Navarro in planning this dinner, begins plating the pollo en mole poblano – chicken with poblano sauce – as the main dinner course begins. This particular kind of mole is native to Navarro’s hometown, Guadalajara.The second part of the main dinner course: tacos de birria, a typical Jalisco stew made with goat or beef marinated in adobo spices and served on a corn tortilla. Traditional toppings include cilantro and the pickled onions seen here—Navarro’s special addition is a spicy red pepper sauce that’s drizzled on top.To round out the meal, Navarro serves plates upon plates of cloud-soft tres leches (“three milks”) cake, each topped with a dainty blueberry. The cake, which dates back to 19th century Mexico, is a traditional dessert throughout Central and South America.
