BEHIND THE COUNTER: This guy shreds
FROM APRIL/MAY 2023 ISSUE OF WEST END PHOENIX
Death metal bassist Miguel Angel Garcia recently expanded his made-from-home churros business into a commercial kitchen in the back of Steadfast Brewing, where he preps killer birria tacos, tamales and other Mexican street-food classics.
When he works, he says, he’s always blasting music. “I like to feel like I’m at a party”
Many years ago, during a blizzard, my mother and I stood at the corner of Lansdowne and Dundas with a full, rickety grocery cart in tow and waited for a bus in front of what was then Knob Hill Farms. Today, on a cool, almost spring day in March, I’m on my way to Steadfast Brewing, a small brewpub that’s close to the lot where the grocery store used to stand. And inside waiting for me is churro king Miguel Angel Garcia.
As I enter, Garcia offers a strong handshake, pulls out a stool for me to sit on and begins heating up the grill. He’s enthusiastic about chatting with me, and feeding me, even though this is the first time we’ve met.
“Are you okay with spice?” he asks.
“Hell, yes, bring it on,” I reply. Garcia, a muscular Mexican with the energy of the sun, plays death metal bass remotely for Brutonomy, a band in Australia. But today it’s meat and tortillas he’s working on.
“My oldest brother used to be into Metallica,” he tells me as he arranges his knives and spoons on the countertop. “I started liking it and got into them and AC/DC. Metal gives me a lot of energy. Whenever I’m tired and I don’t want to continue but I have to, I only need music. Loud. Music here is on all day,” he says of the small workspace he’s renting from Steadfast, where big brewing vats are doing their thing nearby. “Every time I’m cooking, I’m always blasting music. I love to cook to merengue music, salsa, cumbia. I like to feel like I’m at a party. It puts me in a good mood.” He hums to himself as he moves around the kitchen.
His life as a working chef began in early 2022, in Toronto. He’d moved here from Nezahualcóyotl, near Mexico City, four years earlier, to be with his Canadian wife. In Mexico, he’d worked as a regulatory affairs specialist for drug firms like AstraZeneca and Novartis. In Toronto, he had a job at a small soap company, and when his wife went back to work after her maternity leave, he decided to become a stay-at-home dad. He did some remote work while spending time with his child, but he longed for something more, something that would give him another taste of his own childhood and the place where he grew up.
“Frying garlic with morita dried chili smells like my mom’s kitchen,” Garcia says. “The first time I made that combo, I got very emotional.”
It’s the same when he fries dough to make churros, he says: “The smell makes me feel that my dad is with me.” Garcia began working with his father when he was 15 years old. “We used to start making the churros around 5 a.m. and we were always blasting music while we were working, exactly as I still do. So I’m bringing those aromas and sounds into my own kitchen,” he says. It makes him feel like he’s “always home.”
Garcia places two tortillas on a plate, slathers them with tender-looking beef blade and pours a thick sauce overtop made with dried chilies, spices and tomato. Along with the birria, he’s serving soup in a cup, a consommé that is hot and spicy. Sitting at my stool, taking in the scent, I’m transported to the kitchen of an auntie in Colombia who would offer food as a gift when I simply took the time to visit.
“My younger brother Manuel and I used to play gigs on Saturday nights with our death metal band, My Own Code, in Mexico City, and we had to work at 5 a.m. on Sunday. So we’d go directly from the party to work without sleeping and we’d still be a little drunk. My dad used to get mad about it, but we were like, ‘Whatever.’ The work was physically intense, and the churro factory got very, very hot. We were sweating and feeling a little hungover, but we kept working anyway. When my dad was feeling a little less mad, he’d bring us a big, ice-cold beer that felt like heaven.”
“When I started cooking,” he adds, “it was so weird that I kind of knew how to do it. I used to help my mom clean potatoes and chop stuff, but I’d never done the whole thing.”
“Making recipes is like making songs. You need to understand what the function of everything in it is. The salsa in tacos is like the bass in music. It glues everything together”
As for the rest of his dishes – which include carnitas, tamales and enfrijoladas (fried tortillas dipped in bean sauce) – “to replicate the flavours, I approach it like it’s a laboratory,” he explains. “For example, I make a salsa. I taste it to see if it needs more salt, spice, maybe there’s too much black pepper. I take notes, tweak it and once I get the recipe right, I make a spreadsheet in Excel with all my formulations.”
He shows me the spreadsheet that contains the recipe for the dish that sits before me. I grab the birria taco, dip it in the cup and I find myself transported to a house like my auntie’s, eating an unforgettable home-cooked dish.
“To get recipes out of my mom, I always need to guide her because she is very vague in her answers. I’ll ask, ‘How much do you put into this?’ She’ll reply with, ‘I don’t know – a container like this.’ I’ll ask her to show me the container and get an idea of the measurements. Then I go home and test it out.”
The former engineer was always testing outcomes, even as a kid. “We are six siblings, but my brother and I were the crazy ones. We used to have long hair and dress in black with upside-down crosses and all that. My parents are very traditional; they’re Catholic. They didn’t like that at all,” he recalls.
“We also had the band together,” Garcia says. “I played bass, my brother played guitar. He’s a very good guitar player. My parents would say, ‘No! That music is so bad! What are people going to think? That you’re bad people?’ I’d come back and say to them, ‘What are you talking about? I go to school!’”
His consommé alone is worth a trek to the West End; it’s a beef broth flavoured by roasted vegetables, dried chilies, 10 spices and bone marrow, and its heat builds and ebbs deliciously. Garcia confesses he sometimes drinks it all day for energy when he’s busy.
By the time I’ve finished the birria, the cup of consommé and a cold cider to wash it down, I’m full. I tell Garcia I’m grateful for the meal. The culinary evolution of Toronto is very much shaped by people like him, infusing their new home with the colour of their old one.
“Making recipes is like making songs,” he says. “You need to understand what the function of everything in it is. The salsa in tacos is like the bass in music. It glues everything together.”
Before I go, Garcia shows me a photo of his parents on his phone. They’re a happy older couple wearing big hats and smiles in front of a lush background. Garcia’s face lights up. “Spicy food is like love,” he tells me. “If it doesn’t hurt a little bit, it’s not real.”
As I head out, I give him a big hug and look back at the corner where my mom and I once stood waiting for the bus. It still looks the same, but there are new things around it. Snow starts to fall, and I huddle into my coat, my belly warm.