Food brings this family together, but one particular recipe reminds them of home

Food has been at the center of Teddy and Alexis Vejar’s lives since they were kids.

They remember walking around their neighborhood in Morelia, Michoacán, where people would open up their driveways or garages and serve dinner out of their homes.

When they moved to Chicago in the 1990s, their dad — who they call “the original Mexican foodie” — still searched far and wide for the best food he could find.

“We would literally drive from Chicago all the way to Oaxaca, and my dad would say, ‘We’re going to try cabrito (suckling goat),’” Alexis Vejar said. “We would take detours for specific dishes. We would go all the way to Veracruz just to try the pescado a la Veracruzana.”

Today, the brothers own Jarabe. The restaurant opened in 2015 and prides itself on authentic Mexican cuisine. You won’t find any “fancy tacos” at the Little Italy spot.

“We could do fancy tacos,” Alexis Vejar said. “But what’s ridiculously good? What my grandma used to do — harvesting the corn, milking the cow, making the cheese, making sour cream. That’s more hard work than a Michelin-star restaurant is prepared to do.”

The brothers have spent 15 years building a menu they can be proud of, and every recipe traces back to what they learned from their parents and grandparents.

When they began developing their recipes, they focused on making things from scratch, like tortillas and marinades, even when it was more difficult.

Of all the dishes they grew up eating, one remains their favorite all these years later: cochinita pibil. They serve it at their restaurant.

Teddy and Alexis have fond memories living in Chicago’s Ukrainian Village, when their dad began making homemade cochinita pibil for them and their extended family. Even today, the family gets together to eat the dish.

Cochinita pibil is a Yucatán-style pulled pork dish. The pork is marinated in achiote paste and served with tortillas and pickled red onions. It’s considered one of Yucatán’s traditional dishes, and it’s a favorite celebration meal for the Vejar family.

The dish reminds them of when their dad would cook it for them when they were kids.

“My dad’s really into analyzing dishes and seeing how you can improve them, so that was part of the fun,” Alexis Vejar said. “It’s something that Teddy and I ate a lot in Morelia because there was one puestito that sold cochinita pibil. We just rolled up to the tiny place that sold these tiny little tacos with the little red onions on top. We were obsessed with them. It just reminded us so much of home.”

Looking back to their time in Mexico, Alexis and Teddy reflected on how simple the recipes seemed in theory, though they now realize the immense time and process everything entailed. Corn was grown and harvested, then went through the nixtamalization process — a tradition they maintain at their restaurant today to craft their own homemade tortillas.

“Every time we visited my grandma, she was waking up and making homemade bread with natural yeast that she was cultivating in a wood-burning oven,” Alexis Vejar said. “If we had sour cream or cheese, she milked the cow to make it. If we had meat, it was meat that they raised, that they butchered, that they cured. The menus were all limited by what was available on the farm.”

Even after years in business, Alexis and Teddy say they’re still learning and growing.

Running a restaurant is nonstop, but they remain committed to honoring the family traditions that started long before Jarabe opened.

“We haven’t slowed down. We’re just getting started,” Alexis Vejar said. “It feels like we’re still in the beginning.”