First Look: Cumbé Brings Mexico City’s Chilaquiles Tortas to Brunswick

After living in Mexico City for seven years and founding a successful taqueria there, Aussie chef Ross McCombe has probably earnt the right to some strong opinions on tortillas. Here’s one: Australia’s commercially available tortillas aren’t good enough to open a taqueria with. You can go to the huge effort of make them yourself, like he did during a brief stint cooking at Southbank’s Hacienda. Even then, our hybridised local corn doesn’t really measure up to Mexico’s 60-plus heirloom varieties, which can be purple, blue or red.

Solution? Open a compact sandwich shop instead, like he and business partner Rafael Bravo did last week. (Yeah, yeah, we know Melbourne already has a lot of sanga shops – this one’s different.)

Bravo developed a crush on Melbourne’s coffee culture years ago, while studying engineering here. After gaining experience at local roasters, he returned home to start his own just under five years ago. Cumbé , which bills itself as a “Melbourne specialty coffee roaster”, now has two locations in CDMX. The duo’s meet-cute happened at one.

While Cumbé in Brunswick shares the name, that’s about it. The roasts come from local legends Market Lane and Seven Seeds, brewed as espresso, batch brew and coffeechata, a mix of espresso and house-made horchata. And apart from house-made biscuits and some pastries from Suburbia, the food looks to Mexico City’s torta de chilaquiles shops, where stewed meats, requeson (ricotta) and deep-fried tortilla strips are shoved into crusty bolillo rolls.

McCombe has a particular fondness for La Esquina Del Chilaquil (“The Chilaquiles Corner”), near where he lives in CDMX. “The place pumps. There’s a massive line every day,” he tells Broadsheet.

He’s re-creating the magic on Sydney Road with crumbled La Tortilleria totopos, That’s Amore ricotta and tiger rolls from Coburg bakery Dat Thanh (the bolillo is a close cousin of the banh mi). Each roll (or bowl, if you’d prefer) is garnished with sour cream, onion, coriander and salsa roja or verde, depending on the day.

Panko-crumbed chicken thighs, egg and vegan cheese are three proteins you can ask for, but the main character is a recipe McCombe developed at Quintonil , last year named number 3 in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards. It’s the Yucatán speciality cochinita pibil, or slow-cooked pork. McCombe marinates his overnight in achiote, sour orange, garlic, guajillo and various other chillies, then roasts it for 14 hours, until deliciously soft.

The cochinita also goes into Cumbé’s house-made pies, a pandemic-era project McCombe started in CDMX and briefly carried on at Hacienda. Two others feature beef, black bean and earthy morita chilli, and roast pumpkin, lentils and ricotta. He also makes a pork al pastor sausage roll. As any Aussie knows, these items aren’t complete without good old tomato sauce. Cumbé makes its own, fermenting tommies for five days and pressing them into squeeze bottles labelled caballo muerto (“dead horse”). Fun! Alternately, reach for the house-made recado negro, a garlic and burnt-chilli sauce that also comes from Yucatán.

Who needs tortillas and tacos when you have options like these?

Cumbé will close on September 15 for a power upgrade. It’s open every day until then.

Cumbé Tortas & Coffee
551 Sydney Road, Brunswick
No phone

Hours
Daily 7.30am–3pm

@cumbe.au