Chichen Itza

Banana leaves at the counter

The pork goes into banana leaves for cochinita pibil, with achiote and sour orange doing the slow work before service. Gilberto Cetina, chef at Chichen Itza in South Los Angeles, keeps that Yucatecan method close to the counter inside Mercado La Paloma. He worked this station from 2010–2017 before founding Holbox in 2017, and the line between those rooms is practical rather than decorative: repetition first, then a sharper room of his own. At Chichen Itza, the apprenticeship was the daily one, corn masa, pickled red onions, black bean puree, turkey, pork shoulder, mesquite, lime. The house does not state the mentor chain behind Cetina’s training here, so the lineage has to be read through the dishes he kept making and later carried forward. Cochinita pibil, poc chuc, sikil-pak and tamal colado form a working grammar, not a nostalgia exercise. Each plate asks for the same discipline: acid held in check, smoke kept useful, tortillas handled as structure rather than garnish. In a mercado room, that discipline has nowhere to hide.

Sour orange, achiote, mesquite

The program at Chichen Itza is built around Yucatecan technique with little need for ornament. Poc chuc starts with thin slices of pork shoulder, marinated in sour orange juice, then grilled over mesquite charcoal. Longaniza asada brings house chorizo smoked over mesquite embers, with roasted tomato sauce, onions, avocado and tortillas set beside it. Panuchos begin with handmade corn tortillas split and filled with black bean puree, then finished with shredded turkey, lettuce, pickled red onions, tomato and avocado. Sikil-pak, the tomato and pumpkin seed dip, gives the table another register of the same region: earth, seed, char, acid. The fish ceviche tostada works by lime, serrano, cilantro, tomato, onion and avocado rather than weight. The craft here is not a tasting-menu arc. It is a set of preparations that can survive counter service because the method has been tightened before the plate reaches the pass.

The room inside Mercado La Paloma

The counter sits inside Mercado La Paloma, the South Los Angeles food hall at 3655 S Grand Ave #C6, where communal seating changes the tempo of the meal. Tortillas arrive warm enough to bend around pork without breaking. Mesquite smoke moves through the room before the plate does. The service is casual, but the bench has its own pressure: orders called, tortillas turned, onions lifted from their brine, banana leaves opened without ceremony. Families, regulars and first-time diners share the same mercado air, and the room makes regional cooking feel less like a performance than a habit kept in public. Chichen Itza’s wine program is minimal; horchata and jamaica sit more naturally beside the food. The lasting detail is still the cochinita pibil in banana leaves at Chichen Itza.