Mayan Café, 813 E.Market St. celebrates its tenth anniversary in business this month by offering a recap of some of their most popular dishes. And its most popular dish, the lima beans, will be offered for free all day every Monday during the month.
A story in the Courier-Journal detailed all the annual dishes that will appear during the month-long celebration, which starts with the Mayapan chilaquiles, a dish from 2007. The Izamal scallops appeared in 2008, and the Mayan burger, made with locally-sourced beef, was a special in 2009.
Other dishes to be recapitulated are a roasted rabbit with Yucatec molé, cochinita pibil, duck breast with white molé, salmon with cuitlacoche cream sauce, beef tampiqueña, spaghetti squash with beets and coconut-ginger sauce, and seafood crepes with collards and bacon.
Mayan Café chef and owner, Bruce Ucán, was a pioneer in the revival of the E. Market Street area now known as NuLu, with the opening of his Mayan Gypsy restaurant in 1997, in the space that now houses Harvest. Ucán has also been a pioneer in the farm-to-table movement, sourcing much of his ingredients from local farmers before that had become a trend.
While Mexican food has become more popular and available all around town, Ucán still is the only chef offering Mayan cuisine, cooking the food he knew as he was growing up in the Yucatan area of Mexico.
