Nido News
#10 The Cemita: Spanish for Big Mac
This sandwich, from the Mexican state of Puebla, joins the banh mi, cubano, and panino as part of our lunchtime canon. —A.K.
Here's where to get our favorites:
⋅Nido, Oakland, CA
⋅Cemitas Puebla, Chicago
⋅Cemita, Brooklyn
⋅Cascabel Taqueria, NYC
⋅El Chucho, Washington, D.C.
A survey of unlikely culinary mashups in the Bay Area would include a bluegrass bar serving West African dishes (Soleil's African Cuisine); a doughnut shop that, for a brief but glorious time, sold Cambodian meat skewers (Yellow Brick Cafe, RIP); and a world-beater of a Chinese restaurant inside another Chinese restaurant (Mission Chinese Food).
Add to that pantheon Oakland's Nido and PieTisserie: the former a Mexican restaurant with Californian sensibilities; the latter an old-fashioned, mostly-all-American pie shop — two up-and-coming businesses that share a lime-green building in the Jack London district.
Sometimes you want pie. Plain and simple. Other times you want pie, less plain and less simple. Like with a beer. And what the hell, some chicken mole. And you might even be open to crossing a bridge to get it... Say hello to Nido and Pietisserie, a dual Mexican eatery/pie counter mashup, opening Tuesday near Jack London Square.
Continue reading story from Urban Daddy here
Much like Sarah Michelle Gellar and a 424yr-old vampire who's been cursed with a soul, this brick and mortar -- containing both Mexican-slinging Nido and pie-slinging PieTisserie -- is a combo you'd never expect that still goes together deliciously well.
Slated to open this fall (Kickstarter campaign in motion) in Oakland's Jack London area, is a farm to table Mexican restaurant, Nido (meaning "nest"), from husband and wife Silvia and Cory McCollow. Silvia worked in a number of East Bay kitchens (Cosecha, Chez Panisse, B Restaurant), and is creating recipes inspired by her hometown of Nayarit, Mexico, for their debut restaurant.
The Jack London Square District is officially in growth mode as news breaks today of another new restaurant headed to the neighborhood. Nido, is a "farm-to-table" Mexican restaurant currently in build-out mode on Oak Street. Eli Spear (Make Westing, Public Works) has been contracted to design and create the bar and dining room with the help of reclaimed palettes, shipping container parts, and construction sign poles found nearby.
You know a neighborhood is on its upswing when local restauranteurs talk about establishing an eatery that prides itself on farm-to-table sustainability. Such is the case with Nido, a Mexican restaurant in Oakland whose proprietary and culinary team have big dreams for helping to catalyze the flourishing of the neighborhood.
There's this odd building at the corner of 4th and Oak that I used to pass on the way to the BART station. It was painted a bloody shade of maroon, and advertised a peculiar hodgepodge of grilled quasi-Asian style meats, fruit smoothies, and wheatgrass shots, of all things. I can't remember if I ever saw it open. There was something about the menu that both intrigued and repelled me, but as it always looked somewhat abandoned, I never satisfied my curiosity. That strange space has now been painted a more sophisticated dark blue, the insides have been painstakingly remodeled, and gone are the giant, tacky photos of meat on the grill beneath a sign advertising "Oak Street BBQ Meats Starting at $5.99". A new restaurant is tentatively scheduled to open there in October.
More details were released about Nido, the foodie-Mexican restaurant set for a fall opening on the edge of Jack London Square. As was first reported here, Silvia and Cory McCollow are planning a farm-to-table Mexican concept with executive chef Sylvia (who has cooked at Cosecha, Chez Panisse, and B Restaurant) featuring recipes inspired by the coastal region of Nayarit, Mexico where her family is from.