Pablo Díaz is the chef and owner of the restaurants Mercado 24 and Dora La Tostadora in Guatemala City, Guatemala. His restaurants have never been about tasting menus or getting rankings but serving good food using the best ingredients at fairly reasonable prices. He has been one of the driving forces in Guatemala’s modern culinary movement, helping small farmers and artisan fishermen connect with restaurants in the city in a fair way, while also changing the perception of diners of the quality of local ingredients.
I first met Pablo in 2018 in Guate. It was my first time back in the country in years and it was just a quick stopover for a few days and it opened my eyes to how much was going on there at every level, from street food and markets to fine dining restaurants. I went with Diego Telles of the wonderful fine dining restaurant Flor de Lis on an intense whirlwind tour around the city and there was one very unlikely restaurant that stood out called Dora La Tostadora. It was a tostada shop, set in an old shoe store. I ended up writing about it for The New York Times and it was maybe one of my favorite restaurant stories I ever wrote there.
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There were just a couple of sidewalk seats and a sort of thrown together interior. “Inside the former shoe store are just a few wooden tables and a two-stool counter that’s lined with a dozen or so bottles of different hot sauces,” I wrote. “The décor has a haphazard, thrown-together feel: Christmas lights, a poster of the ruins of Tikal on the wall, a cartoon cutout of Dora the Explorer, the tiny restaurant’s namesake.”
The restaurant began as a pop-up months before while his market driven restaurant Mercado 24 was in the process of moving locations and his staff still needed a job. I absolutely love tostadas, maybe even more than tacos, and these were some of the best I ever had. They had the absolutely right combination and proportions of proteins like fish and beef tongue with different herbs, oils and spices on a crispy tortilla. They moved to a larger location, and more recently into an even larger location, but it began with such a simple idea that makes so much sense, as does Mercado 24. Pablo’s restaurants are creative and cool, but they aren’t flashy. There are no tasting menus and he’s not doing what he does for international appeal. He has been doing it for his community and after 10 years you can see the impact it has had.
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