Lorenzo Azria, who owns Salsa a la Salsa with his wife Elvia, and runs it
with the help of plenty of family: His daughter waits tables during the
day, his son-in-law at night, and the youngest kids help when they can.
Lorenzo grew up in the Mexican village of Popo Park, near the town of
Amecameca, which is on the side of those legendary volcanoes,
Popocatepeti and Ixtaccihuati, which is visible from Mexico City.

"Mixiotes is an ancient, pre-Columbian way of cooking," explained
Lorenzo, when I talk to him on the phone for his story, "but they
used to use the outer skin of maguey leaves.  Then, when I grew up, my
mom and her family put cactus leaves in everything, because they grow
in our backyards."  One day Lorenzo saw a recipe for mixiotes made in
aluminum foil--which he thinks is horrible, because it makes the food
taste like metal--and got to tinkering, and a few decades later we've got
this marvelous dish in Minneapolis.

Lorenzo had plenty of time to tinker.  After leaving the side of the
volcano, he spent most of the 1970's, '80's, and '90's in Los Angeles
hotels and catering companies, where he married Elvia (sister to the
founder of the Tacos Morelos empire), learned French cooking
techniques, watched the California Cuisine revolution, and invented all
sorts of dishes that combined authentic Southwestern tastes and
techniques with the low-cal, high tastes needs of Los Angeles's high-
octane power-players.  Lorenzo says he has cooked for Julia Roberts and
Jackie Collins, and just ask him about the things he has catered for
Danny DeVito's Fourth of July festivities.