El Molino del Sureste
When the Powerball lottery crossed a billion dollars earlier this month, I started buying tickets. “Why not me?” I thought. The odds were low—something like 1 in 300 million—but I believed I deserved it. I’d build a farm for elderly rescue dogs, pay off every school lunch debt in the country, and I’d never see any of you ever again.
I didn’t win—if I had, I wouldn’t be writing a food blog—so instead, I started Googling the odds of other things. Like, what are the chances Earth gets hit by another “planet killer” asteroid? 1 in 100 million, give or take.
Which means the Yucatan was three times luckier than I was when it got walloped by Chicxulub, the mondo asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, sent the planet into a literal dark age, and left a crater 120 miles wide.
This might be a controversial opinion, but I’m glad the asteroid landed there, because without it, we wouldn’t have El Molino del Sureste. And that would have been even worse than planetary destruction.
This new and improved late-2025 version of myself will no longer be comparing restaurants to each other or saying this is “this is the best whatever in wherever.” I’ve either become much more mature or much less confident.
What I am confident saying is that if El Molino was located in downtown Chicago, you would never be able to get a seat.
The restaurant is owned by chef Alex Henry and his brother, Jeff. You can read more about their backgrounds here.
I remember the first time I had Alex’s food. It was in 2019 at the farmer’s market. He made tamal colado and pulpo en su tinta, a creamy tamale and octopus cooked in its own ink, respectively. It was mind blowing—partially because it was a mix of flavors and textures I’d never had together, and partially because of his habanero hot sauce.
Flash forward to 2025, and El Molino is still blowing my mind every meal.
I guess the best place to start talking about El Molino is, well, the molino—the mill. You walk in the door, and there it is. Every night, Alex boils a small hot-tub worth of dried corn in water and slaked lime, which softens the corn and makes the nutrients more easily digestible. This is called nixtamalization, which you can impress all your friends with. After steeping overnight, the corn is rinsed, then ground in the mill with volcanic millstones, then kneaded, THEN thrown onto the roto comal.
TLDR: a lot of work goes into those tortillas.
Most Mexican food in the U.S. comes from the northern Mexico states. If you Google “the Yucatán,” you’ll see it’s in the southeast, the part that flips up like a scorpion’s tail. You’re going to taste things you’ve never tasted before, but trust me when I tell you to trust the Henry brothers. Let’s all trust each other.
Everything about the restaurant is an invitation for discussion about the real Mexico, something beyond tequila shots, sombreros, and other hackneyed caricatures. The art, the colors, the music, the drinks, and obviously, the food, transport you somewhere else.
We started the meal with the aquachile de sandia. Think of it as ceviche’s spicier Mexican cousin. El Molino’s version uses both diced watermelon and watermelon juice, giving it the perfect amount of summertime sweetness to cut through the chili, lime, and cucumber marinade. I could imagine myself eating this on the beach in Quintana Roo, but not Cancún or some other touristy spot—somewhere more remote and beautiful, where I can escape to after I win the Powerball and fake my own death.
The next two dishes we got came at Jeff’s recommendation. The tlacoyo de camote was like a fried masa Hot Pocket stuffed with goat cheese, chives, and ground pepitas, topped with smoked sweet potatoes, salsa macha, fresh oranges, honey, and herbs. If there was a dish that tasted like summer turning into fall, this was it.
“You’ve had chile en nogada, right? It’s one of Mexico’s national dishes,” Jeff asked me.
“Of course I have. It’s one of my favorites!” I lied so fast, I scared myself. “The…nogada…really pulls it all together.”
Like an Italy’s margherita pizza, the dish mirrors the colors of the Mexican flag: green poblano peppers, white sauce made from black walnuts—nogada, and red pomegranate seeds. The charred pepper was stuffed with beef and pork picadillo with an almost confusing—in the best way—amount of flavor.
“Jeff, this filling tastes like…Thanksgiving?"
“The filling is always seasonal. Right now it has plantains, golden raisins, pine nuts, nectarines, and walnuts,” he said.
“That’s exactly what I would have guessed,” I said, hoping to impress my girlfriend, but she saw right through me. As usual.
The dish I have gotten every single time I’ve been, without fail, is the taco de camarones al coco: coconut shrimp tacos. I was sure this was an invention by Alex, but again, I know nothing—it’s actually a riff on a traditional dish from Campeche, a place I didn’t know existed until this dish. The shrimp are battered in coconut and masa—basically turning each into a self-contained shrimp-shaped taco—giving them a great crunch and a nutty, earthy flavor. Tamarind and peach salsa slices through the richness.
Chile en Nogada
The larger plates are where the restaurant really goes for the throat. The menu changes often—over 80% of their ingredients are sourced from independent farms within 250 miles of St. Louis—but these were our picks our last visit.
I’ll start with the most classic: pescado en pipian rojo. Fish of the day—Cobia—was seared hard, topped with a nutty, clay-colored pepita sauce, rich with that bitter, smoky flavor from burnt chiles. It came with potatoes, olives, pepitas, and salted nectarines—sharp enough to cut through the smoke.
The cayo de hacha en mole blanco is exactly the kind of dish that a lesser chef would fall face-first making. Unlike some of the more traditional dishes we’ve already discussed, this one is Alex’s invention. He makes a mole blanco with nuts and seeds, spices and herbs, dried and fresh fruit, and…white chocolate? Scallops with white chocolate—can’t you just hear Gordon Ramsay saying, “Disgusting. What were you thinking?” But not here. This is a subtle, delicate dish that is a must-order. If you’re not a white chocolate fan (like me), don’t let it dissuade you. Think of it more like adding a dash of cream or butter to a sauce, but also, not that at all.
“Traditional variations of mole blanco exist in Oaxaca, but they’re rarely served with seafood, and never contain chocolate of any kind, much less white chocolate,” Jeff told me. “The white chocolate was a decision made with the delicate flavor of sea scallops in mind.”
The star of the show: pulpo en su tinta. Octopus cooked in its ink. The dish is so not-showy that it…might be the most theatrical dish on the entire menu? It looks like a bowl of jet black motor oil, a tentacle just barely breaking the surface, coiled around a charred chile like Cthulhu wrapping around a submarine (one of the many reason I’m terrified of the ocean).
Like everything else on the menu, the dish changes slightly with what’s in season, but every time I have it, I think: What am I even eating right now? It tasted like the sea, it tasted like fire—and there are those warm fall spices again—allspice, cloves, coriander.
If there’s sauce left at the end, ask for a tortilla and mop it up. I won’t say it’s the best octopus in town, but I will say that I’m hard pressed to think of one that’s better.
If you consider yourself a “foodie,” go. If you’re looking for a new date spot, go. If you are looking for a margarita in a cactus glass and a sizzling plate of fajitas…maybe don’t.
You won’t find another restaurant like this in St. Louis.
Pulpo en su Tinta