Chabela Brings Street Snacks and More From Mexico City to Thornbury

Karla Martinez grew up in Coyoacán, one of the oldest neighbourhoods in Mexico City. She and her husband Harry Lawrence, originally from Melbourne, met in Mexico and lived in Mexico City together for five years. When they moved to Melbourne in 2014, they struggled to find dishes they were accustomed to in CDMX. “Nothing has ever quite felt like we were eating something in Mexico,” says Lawrence.

“The food we cook at home is pretty close, but when we ate out, it wasn’t quite doing what we wanted it to do,” he adds. They opened Chabela on High Street, Thornbury, with “the idea to try and make something as authentic as we possibly could”.

Though the pair have both worked in front-of-house roles, they’ve never run a restaurant. Martinez, who studied commercial cookery, leads the kitchen, drawing from dishes passed down through her family and the breadth of cuisine found in Coyoacán.

“It’s got a really old colonial plaza where you get everything from an old lady with her little burner on the street right up to really high-end restaurants,” Lawrence says. “We’re capturing a bit of that.”

Starters mirror snacks you might find streetside, with a bit of finesse, and include mushroom quesadillas, avocado tostadas, prawn aguachile tostadas and corn poached in bone marrow. There are a few larger dishes like enfrijoladas, a folded tortilla filled with cochinita pibil (a Yucatán-style pulled pork cooked in achiote until it turns a deep red) and smothered in black bean sauce, and chicken enchiladas with pipian sauce.

The restaurant makes its tortillas with blue corn masa, which has a nuttier flavour than the white and yellow varieties. Toppings include cochinita pibil, grilled mushrooms and suadero (slow-cooked skirt steak). For something different, tortillas can be swapped for huaraches, a thick, elongated disc named for the indigenous sandals they resemble. “Obviously people eat tacos all the time in Mexico, but huaraches are a bit more unique,” Lawrence says. “You don’t find them everywhere in Mexico either.”

For dessert, there’s just one option: chocoflan, a flan-topped chocolate cake that’s a homey go-to in Mexico. The bar serves a range of small-batch tequila and mezcal, plus cocktails including Palomas, which Lawrence says are a popular house party drink in Mexico.

There’s seating across two dining areas stretching into a back courtyard, with a blue accent wall that echoes the one Lawrence repainted at the front. Beyond that, not much has changed since the space’s former life as Joanie’s Baretto. The couple were intentional about not leaning into cultural tropes, instead letting the food speak for itself. 

Chabela
832A High Street, Thornbury
(03) 7302 0698

Hours:
Wed & Thu 5pm–9pm
Fri 5pm–10pm
Sat 3pm–10pm
Sun 3pm–9pm

chabela.com.au
@chabelathornbury