Joe Valero Makes Some of Sydney’s Best Tacos. Now He’s Leading the Lottie Kitchen

Holiday vibes don’t immediately spring to mind when you think of Redfern, but that changed when Lottie landed on The Eve’s rooftop. Liquid & Larder – Alfie’s, Bistecca, The Gidley, The Rover, Bar Julius – opened the slick space in January, and it has just welcomed Joe Valero as head chef.

You’ll know Valero as the one-man-show running Llankelly Place’s cosy Tacos Tacos Tacos, where it was all about … tacos. Very good ones, at that. Before that he was at Nikkei in Surry Hills and Alcalde, the restaurant at number 12 on Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants List.

“Definitely a bit of a learning curve at the beginning,” Valero tells Broadsheet. “Especially coming from the single-chef, doing things on my own – just one person doing absolutely everything was something that I always had the curiosity and interest [to do] – to now having a really strong team around me. But honestly that was, like, all of my dreams come true.”

First order of business: a complete overhaul of the opening menu, because there’s potential to showcase more of the flavours and craft of Mexican cuisine. “The [Lottie] brief was Mexican food that is done outside of Mexico, and I think that’s such a good approach, because that’s the way I see food over here in Australia. There’s so many good restaurants: in London you have Kol, you have Cosme in New York. Even this place in Bangkok. These are all, to me as a chef, really successful at expanding what Mexican cuisine is right now. And that’s what I want to do at Lottie.

“Mexico has such a strong backbone of traditions in cooking, traditions in the way they approach food and family … I’m just embracing all of the ingredients and all the techniques and all the multiculturalism we have over here, too. I’m not strictly like, ‘Oh this dish doesn’t [traditionally] have this’, or ‘This is not the way my mum prepared this’, or ‘This is the way that I would do it in Mexico’.”

If you know Valero’s Tacos menu, you’ll spot riffs. The ocean trout tostada has a base of fermented habanero and mandarin salsa, ramped up further with a house-made Mexican furikake. Then there’s the play on his al pastor – done here with surprisingly meaty slow-roasted celeriac. There’s a creamy salsa of confit garlic and jalapeno, Valero’s take on the avocado salsas traditionally seen on Mexican taco stands, that’s “fucking delicious”.

A kangaroo tail sope uses fermented potatoes for a base with a mochi-like chew, with our emblematic animal slow-cooked with Mexican chillies. Local line-caught fish is served cured with lime, and you’ll find carne apache, where Riverine sirloin tartare arrives with taro chips and Valero’s nutty salsa macha.

“I was a bit intimidated, almost, about the change of pace and just how stunning the venue is. I went there for the first time and it was such a lovely day – it’s this really open space, the roof of a hotel, just sun-drenched. Lots of plants around.”

With all that and more, Valero’s approach is set to re-energise Lottie.

Joe Valero joins Redfern’s Lottie as head chef. His full menu is available now.

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@lottie.syd