La Santisima Owners to Open Jalisco-Style Restaurant on McDowell Road in Phoenix

The Jalisco-style restaurant will do mesquite-fired cooking in a brick oven.

March 6, 2018

La Marquesa is set to open in May. Chris Malloy

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Felipe Guzman's new restaurant on East McDowell Road is going to be a celebration of Jalisco, the Mexican state of his birth. Jalisco is home to birria and tequila. La Marquesa will specialize in both.

Guzman, who owns La Santisima Gourmet Taco Shop on 16th Street (and a second location in Glendale), says he will open La Marquesa in May.

La Marquesa will serve birria made from goat and beef. Tacos — including lengua, carnitas, brain, cheek, and chamorro, a braised pork — will be made in the Jalisco spirit. There will be torta ahogado, drowned in sauce almost like an enchilada-style burrito, a torta style popular in Guadalajara, as well as marrow bones roasted in a mesquite-fired brick oven that will be the heart of the restaurant's cooking.

And there will be lots of tequila. Guzman has plans to serve margaritas and other widespread tequila drinks. He also plans to mix cocktails from various flavors of Jarritos, the Mexican soda.

"It's going to be food from Jalisco," Guzman says. "All the food is going to be cooked in the brick oven."

Guzman owns La Santisima with his wife, Cristina, and his mom, Guadalupe. Guadalupe will provide most of La Marquesa's Jalisco-inspired recipes. The three have studied cooking in Puebla, Mexico.

La Marquesa will open its doors at McDowell Road and 19th Street, just west of Tacos Chiwas. A mural of agave will cover one of the restaurant's walls. As of now, Guzman projects a May opening.

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Chris Malloy, former food editor and food critic at Phoenix New Times, has written for various local and national outlets. He has scrubbed pots in a restaurant kitchen, earned graduate credit for a class about cheese, harvested garlic in Le Marche, and rolled pastas like cappellacci stuffed with chicken liver. He writes stories on the food world's margins.

Contact: Chris Malloy

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