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New restaurant Mas Mañanitas opens Mas Tacos, Mas Tequila, Mas Vida in Woodland Hills – Daily News

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Modern Mexican restaurant Mas Mananitas owners Cathy Martinez, Joanna Martinez and Carmin Padilla at the restaurant in Woodland Hills on Friday, May 31, 2024. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

With the motto “best tacos, best tequila, best life,” a trio of first-time restaurateurs are taking inspiration from family recipes and putting a modern spin on them at their new Woodland Hills restaurant, Mas Mañanitas.

“At the heart of this restaurant are family recipes that have been adapted and refined from different regions of Mexico,” said Joanna Martinez, co-owner and executive chef of the restaurant, which opened May 1. Martinez runs the new eatery with his wife, Cathy Martinez, and sister-in-law, Carmin Padilla.

“The story behind this restaurant is really about unity and family,” she said.

And of course, it is all about the fine cuisine, including street food, seafood plates, mole, certified Angus steaks, vegetarian dishes and of course fusion plates such as burritos, tacos, birria pizza and traditional birria made from an old family recipe.

But it’s also backed by years of experience and a lifelong shared love of food.

Martinez is a restaurant industry veteran. A Le Cordon Bleu graduate, she’s been a chef for 22 years, working for chains like The Cheesecake Factory and nonprofits. She met her now-wife and sister-in-law when they were neighbors as children growing up in Reseda. The three shared a passion for food and family recipes.

“We had always talked about a restaurant concept. We really wanted to create an atmosphere where if you came to our house it was all about hospitality. You come and you’re going to have a good time and good food. We wanted to communicate that to the public,” Martinez said.

Martinez runs the kitchen, but her wife and sister-in-law can also cook, so the three work together to come up with the menu.

“The great thing about Carmin and Cathy and I is that while I have the experience, they have real traditional Mexican cooking roots. Their backgrounds are from their dads cooking in the backyard with pots, cooking in pits, making carnitas for their families,” she said.

“They bring a really deep-rooted tradition to the restaurant and I’m the one who brings the food-driven fusion. The two mesh really well together and I feel like it’s a really happy balance,” she added.

That happy balance has led to dishes like Tio Tiro’s birria, made with birria stewed for 12 hours and served with consommé, a recipe inherited from Tio’s wife’s father.

“When it’s brought to your table it’s served in a clay pot and as soon as you take a bite, the flavour of the chilli and herbs that have been simmering all day fills your mouth. The consommé is not too heavy and has a clean, rustic flavour topped with onion and coriander,” she said.

To blend the traditional with the new, they came up with the Queso Birria Pizza, which uses Tio Tiro’s birria and is essentially a pizza made with a 12-inch flour tortilla and cheeses from Chihuahua and Oaxaca mixed with traditional mozzarella.

“When you take a bite, the flavor of the birria spices bursts out and you feel like you’re in grandma’s kitchen, and then you get that delicious bright cheese and the crunch of the tortilla,” she said.

“We just want people to have a good time here,” Martinez said. “We want it to be a celebration, a celebration of life with good food and good drinks. That’s why we named it Mas Mañanitas: more breakfasts, more tacos, more tequila, more life.”

Mas Mañanitas

Location: 19723 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills.

Opening hours: Tuesday and Wednesday 4pm to 11pm, Thursday to Sunday 4pm to 1:30am

Information: masmananitas.com



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