It was the announcement that rocked Westport. Even if months of self-isolation hadn’t left us starving for thrills, Chef Bill Taibe’s news would have ignited breathless speculation and thrown taste buds into a tizzy:
Don Memo!
Yes, Bill shuttered Jesup Hall and, in seemingly moments, celebrated the opening of a Mexican cantina.
First: Yay! Second: What? Third: Why?
It all started this past Mother’s Day, during Jesup Hall’s lunch. Bill spent half of this special day preparing and packaging lovely dishes for moms and spent the other half angry.
“We had all this gorgeous and it looked horrible in the boxes!” Bill exclaims, “In the middle of Mother’s Day I came in and told everyone I was done.”
Bill is a guy whose photos exude a restrained professionalism that belies his animation and charm. Which, fortunately, exceeds his capacity to disenchant a loyal staff. They probably already knew what Bill finally realized after three years of cooking American dishes, “I just got bored. There’s only so much I can do with a fat piece of asparagus.”
They probably also knew that Bill would be more bored doing nothing. In fact, it took him all of a day or two to roar back with his zygote fused from self-proclaimed ADD and a lifelong passion for Mexican culture.
“[Jesup Hall] took me a year and half to get right and it was never really a ‘concept’. We called it a ‘tavern.’” Bill says, “A new concept, a cantina, gave us something great to focus on, something different and not just the week-to-week.”
So they steamed off the vintage topiarian wallpaper and replaced it with hand-painted grass-cloth. They replaced the framed maps and tonal art with colorful prints and black and white photographs.
Bartenders stocked the bar with tequilas and mezcals, creating colorful aqua frescas and margaritas from freshly-squeezed fruit juices.
He and his executive chef, Anthony Kostelis, scoured the farmers market and farms for locally-sourced ingredients, developing a menu of tostados, guacamoles, tamales, and home-made tortillas. They taste-tested every new dish, knowing they wouldn’t serve it until it was blessed by their Mexican staffers. “All I cared about is what they thought,” Bill smiles. “Here we are, a bunch of gringos in the kitchen so we’re handing everything to them to make sure they like it.” The result, according to Stephanie Webster of CTBites.com, is a menu full of dishes with a “Clean, bright, spectacular, deep flavor” that are “good for take-out,” should the four horsemen of the apocalypse shack up with the angels of hell in a nice little rental near Compo.
A week after Dad’s Day, Cantina Don Memo was born.
You, like me, may have assumed that Bill named his bebé after a great war hero or political leader. You may have wondered how Bill knows about this man and you do not. Perhaps you assumed Bill enjoyed a superior education or a better memory than you. Were this to be true, you might conveniently blame the bias of history book writers and educators throughout your own academic journey.
Relax, dear reader. Your memory is fine. And the reason for the name is mucho más delightful than political:
Memo Garcia is Bill’s favorite employee. He hails from Puebla, Mexico, and has worked in the Taibe eatery empire for over 15 years. Since then, Memo has been joined by his brothers Erik and Aaron and, most recently, his 19-year-old son, Brian.
Bill and his family have visited Memo’s family in Puebla several times, where Bill “obsesses” over their culture and cuisine. Evidently there are a lot of good cooks in la familia de Garcia. In fact, Memo’s father, the original Don Memo, owned a restaurant named… wait for it… Cantina Don Memo. And his wedding photo is on the wall.