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“When I moved to New York City, I couldn’t find good flour tortillas.” – Chef Jorge Aguilar, Border Town Tortilleria

Meet Chef Jorge Aguilar and Amanda Rosa, the co-founders and co-owners of Border Town Tortilleria, a small batch home manufacturing business specializing in handmade, Sonoran-style, Mexican flour tortillas based in Brooklyn, New York. Some brands are born out of years of plotting and planning, others are born out of hustle. Border Town Tortilleria is definitely more hustle, an inspiring story about a career disappointment that led to a wonderful, unexpected opportunity.

Moving from the Mexican food epicenter of Los Angeles to New York City was exciting for the couple. Pre-pandemic, they packed their belongings, crossed the country, and headed east to Brooklyn on an assignment to help open a brand new concept for a small restaurant group they worked with. Amanda specialized in front-of-house management, and Jorge was a seasoned, back-of-house chef. Alas, the pandemic had other ideas and the restaurant plans ended. They were left without work and a lot of time on their hands. To combat boredom, Chef Aguilar decided to finally check off a lifelong goal: to master the art of tortillas. But, not just any tortillas, he set his focus on the soft, handmade flour tortillas he grew up eating in Northern Mexico.

To Jorge, it made sense. Flour tortillas were part of his normal diet, but if he wanted them, he’d have to make them. Back in California, good Mexican flour tortillas were sourced easily, but here in NYC they eluded him.  Everywhere he searched, all he could find were standard supermarket tortillas, or bland, basic Restaurant Depot-style commercial tortillas. Nothing that gave him the satisfaction, softness, and stretch from handmade tortillas back home. But, mastering the technique proved harder than expected.

The Secret Ingredient: Fresh Milled, Mexican Flour from Sonora 

The trial and error process took months, but Chef Aguilar was determined, especially with all the extra downtime. Every day, he’d wake up and head back to the kitchen to mix and roll out tortilla dough, tapping into memories of watching his nannies make them growing up. Testing different flours. Testing different techniques. Testing different ratios of water to fat. All it takes is 4 ingredients: flour, water, salt and fat. But, nothing quite clicked until his mom shipped him flour from a small local mill in Northern Mexico where his dad lived. The town, Mexicali is a border town between Mexico and Calexico, California.

Chef Aguilar explained that flour tortillas were more popular than corn tortillas in Northern Mexico because of the wheat industry. Close to 50% of Mexico’s wheat crops are grown in Northwest Mexico, the center of the country’s grain production. According to Chef Aguilar, this is the main reason why you’ll find flour tortillas more ubiquitous and in-demand than corn tortillas in Northern Mexico. Good flour is just more accessible. From all his recipe tests, the Mexican flour kept beating out all the local, American grown flour he could get his hands on. American brands were just not nailing the texture he was after.

Both Jorge and Amanda believe there’s something uniquely special about the grains and the milling process in Sonora that leads to great tortillas. So, they decided to focus their new business around it. I hope you enjoy the video!! (**For best image quality, set your YouTube player to 4K resolution.)

From my own personal experience with the tortillas, I could instantly taste the high quality. In fact, before eating it, you could feel it in your hands. The silkiness of the tortilla, the weight of the pork lard. They were so soft and so good, it made me upset at myself for settling all these years for mediocre flour tortillas. Border Town Tortilleria’s quality is like nothing I’ve had in New York City. We ate them hot off the flat-top, slathered in salted butter. Amanda was right, the tortillas can take center stage all on their own, filling or no filling. It’s eye-opening, to say the least!

Small-Batch Flour Tortilla Deliveries + Baja-Mexican Cuisine Pop-Ups

To get your hands on Border Town Tortilleria products for pick-up or local delivery, you can DM them on Instagram or find them at one of the many pop-ups they run weekly in Brooklyn. They sell their tortillas by the 1/2 dozen in two sizes: 6-inch (for tacos) $7 and 9-inch (for burritos or large quesadillas) $9. In addition, they offer a choice of pork lard or avocado oil as the fat base, making accommodations for vegetarians and vegans. They source their pork lard locally from their buddies at The Meat Hook.

Brooklyn Pop-Ups

Next weekend, on October 9th, Border Town Tortilleria is also collaborating on a special menu with Egg Shop at the Williamsburg location (138 N. 8th Street) from 8:30am – 4pm. “The special menu will include Chorizo con Papas y Huevo Tacos on handmade Border Town flour tortillas. A Brisket Chilaquiles Burrito with scrambled egg, fried tortillas in salsa roja, jack cheese, crema, cotija, pickled onion, cilantro, and Veggie Tacos with eggs, potato, cilantro, cotija and salsa verde in addition to $8 Micheladas all day.” Mmmm!

The Future Plans

For now, Amanda and Jorge are focused on keeping their operation very local and very small-batch for quality control. Being a mom-and-pop business, Border Town’s community of customers and delivery area are manageable, and growing at a pace they can handle. Making tortillas by hand is very time-consuming, not easy to scale, which is why most restaurants don’t invest in or purchase handmade tortillas. But, once they can secure more interest and funding, they have big dreams of expanding into their own brick and mortar space to spread their love of regional Baja California, Northern Mexico cuisine and Jorge’s flour tortillas.

Thanks so much for watching food. curated. It feels great to be back. Enjoy Jorge & Amanda’s story. Happy eating!

xxSkeeter (@SkeeterNYC)

#eatmorestories #foodcurated