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Chef Alex Henry (Alex Henry Montes De Oca) was born in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and spent a good portion of his childhood in Mexico's Southeastern-most region. A graduate of the nationally-recognized Culinary Arts program at Forrest Park Community College, Chef Alex's has worked under various James Beard Award - Nominated Chefs such as Rob Uyemura, Gerard Craft, Michael Gallina and Ben Poremba. He served as Sous-Chef at restaurants such as YiaYia's EuroCafe, Brasserie by Niche, Taste by Niche and Scape. First garnishing national attention during his stint as Executive Chef at Nixta, he served as Executive Chef Cleveland-Heath, prior to opening a food stall, Suresete Mexican, in the nascent City Foundry Food Hall -- which garnered the 16th spot on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's list of Food Editor Ian Froeb's Top 100 Restaurants in the St. Louis Area in 2023.
After working together to open Sureste Mexican in the fall of 2021 -- Chef Alex, along with older brother, Jeff (Jeff Henry Montes De Oca) -- opened El Molino del Sureste in September of 2023. The concept fulfilled the promise which the two brothers had long considered a distant dream -- a restaurant that could introduce the diners of St. Louis to the otherwise unknown and exotic cuisine of their childhood home (Yucatán ) and a venue to present contemporary cuisine and cocktails through use of traditional Mexican techniques and ingredients.
Everything begins with El Molino's namesake -- the 10-horsepower wet mill that is used on a daily basis to grind house-nixtamalized corn to make fresh masa.
The masa produced from four locally-sourced varieties of corn (white, yellow, red and blue corn) are used, on a rotating basis, to make tortillas, while the unique properties of each corn variety lend themselves to different uses beyond tortilla-making.
This masa serves as the basis for the vast majority of the cuisine -- tortillas, tostadas, tamales, sopes, dumplings, pibihua and a wide variety of the masa products that can trace their culinary lineage to the cuisine of the indigenous ancestors of modern Mexico.
The masa produced from four locally-sourced varieties of corn (white, yellow, red and blue corn) are used, on a rotating basis, to make tortillas, while the unique properties of each corn variety lend themselves to different uses beyond tortilla-making.
This masa serves as the basis for the vast majority of the cuisine -- tortillas, tostadas, tamales, sopes, dumplings, pibihua and a wide variety of the masa products that can trace their culinary lineage to the cuisine of the indigenous ancestors of modern Mexico.
An assortment of house-made tortillas made with local varieties of corn.
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