Jacinta de México in Aventura Is One of South Florida's Most Authentic Hispanic Heritage Month Stories

Hispanic Heritage Month opened on Mexican Independence Day this year, and there may be no better place in South Florida to mark both occasions than Jacinta de México in Aventura. The restaurant, created by Mexico City native Lalo Durazo — the founder and president of DZO Hospitality, also behind Baccan and Koko — is built around a single conviction: that Mexican food is a living archive of history, and that every dish is an opportunity to honor it.

The most visible expression of that conviction is the tortilla. At Jacinta, tortillas are still hand-pressed using nixtamalization, the same 4,000-year-old Aztec process that transforms dried corn into masa through an alkaline soak. The corn itself — organic criollo varieties — is imported specifically for the process. The result is a tortilla that tastes like the ingredient it came from, not a commodity product, and it sets the tone for everything that follows.

The menu reads like a tour of Mexico's regional traditions. Tetelas from Oaxaca — triangular masa pockets filled and toasted on the comal — sit alongside mole made from scratch, a preparation that can involve dozens of ingredients and days of work. Huitlacoche, the corn fungus known as the Mexican truffle, appears in dishes that treat it with the reverence it deserves. And for the adventurous, chapulines — grasshoppers — are served on a wood-fired tostada, a preparation rooted in pre-Columbian Oaxacan cuisine that has never gone away.

For Hispanic Heritage Month, Jacinta is running a special that ties the restaurant's story directly to the calendar: Chiles en Nogada, a poblano pepper stuffed with a picadillo of meat, fruit, and spices, then topped with a walnut cream sauce and pomegranate seeds. The dish presents in the exact colors of the Mexican flag — green from the parsley, white from the nogada, red from the pomegranate — and its origins are tied to Mexican independence itself. It is, in other words, the right dish for this exact moment.

Durazo is available to walk guests through the process personally: the corn, the press, the fire, and the story behind each dish. It is the kind of context that transforms a meal into an education, and at Jacinta, that is clearly the point.

Jacinta de México is located in Aventura. For reservations and more information, visit jacintademexico.com.