“You’ve never tried cactus before?” asks Rosa Cienfuegos, queen of the tamales and owner of Tamaleria & Mexican Deli in Sydney’s inner-western suburb of Dulwich Hill.
I’ve been inspecting the drygoods of her recently opened shop. The counter is lined with baskets of hard-to-find chillies, from the mild guajillo to the notorious habanero; while the shelves are stocked with tortillas, tinned tomatillos, and jars of brined nopales, the pads of the prickly pear cactus plant.
Cienfuegos promptly opens a serve of nopales salad from her shop’s fridge – also brimming with mole sauce and Mexican soft drinks – and offers me a forkful to sample. It’s slimy and sour, with a texture somewhere between a capsicum and a green bean.
Rosa Cienfuegos, owner of Mexican Tamaleria and Deli. Source: Yvonne C Lam
There’s more potted cacti around the space; one spiky specimen near the entrance has its own “Danger” sign.
But they’re the only prickly presence in store. Cienfuegos warmly chats with customers who are here for her tamales, a steamed, hand-held Mexican dish of dough with a savoury filling, wrapped in a corn husk or banana leaf.
Like so many home-cooks-turned-entrepreneurs before her, Cienfuegos first started making tamales for friends and family in 2010.
"Then, out of nowhere, there were a lot of Mexicans I didn't know who were asking for [them],” she says.
Since 2016, she’s been running her eponymous Mexican food stall at markets (she still runs her markets at events around town), including a stint running a pop-up restaurant at Sydney’s Marrickville Market where crowds would line up for her real-deal tacos, quesadillas and those famous tamales.
Then, out of nowhere, there were a lot of Mexicans I didn't know who were asking for [them].
For a while, she also stocked frozen tamales at Mexican provedores, but grew tired of chasing unpaid invoices. In frustration, she joked that she would open her own permanent space, before spying a Dulwich Hill shopfront up for rent: “It was just meant to be for me,” she says.
Her father Julio Cienfuegos has been instrumental to her business. He passed down his tamale recipes to Rosa, and advised her on how to run a commercial kitchen. A trained chef and musician, his mariachi band even played at the tamaleria’s opening in September.
Tamales are a quintessential Mexican dish, eaten almost every day (usually for breakfast) in Cienfuegos’ homeland. However, their fiddly preparation means in-the-know Mexicans make a beeline for her ready-made packages.
To produce the tamale dough, Cienfuegos mixes masa (cornflour) with water, chicken stock and lard.
“You have to keep mixing and mixing … That's what gives the tamales their fluffy texture,” she says. Incorrect preparation results in a dense, stodgy dough.
On a dried corn husk, Cienfuegos spread a thin layer of masa, then layers shredded chicken and a mild salsa verde of green tomatillos, chilli, coriander, and garlic. She seals the mound with more masa, and then – here’s the tricky part – expertly wraps the mixture, husk and all, into a neat rectangular package.
Because the husks are so small, she sometimes has to patch together multiple corn husks to make a single tamale.
The tamales – each one weighing exactly 215 grams – are steamed until the dough is cooked through. For 100 tamales, this can take up to three hours.
Cienfuegos offers two types of tamales: pollo con salsa verde (chicken with green salsa), and chiles poblano con queso (spiced capsicum with cheese). They’re available frozen for customers to take home, but Cienfuegos says, "there's nothing like having tamales fresh [from the steamer]."
Her father Julio Cienfuegos has been instrumental to her business ... A trained chef and musician, his mariachi band even played at the tamaleria’s opening in September.
There’s no chairs and tables inside, but happy customers make do, standing on the footpath and tucking into their still-warm tamales.
But the million-peso question still persists: is this authentic Mexican?
Her Mexican customers say her tamales “taste like home”; but on a recent visit to her native Mexico City, Cienfuegos didn’t like the tamales from the city’s street stalls.
“It was a shock to me ... They were so dry, too big, and full of masa,” she says.
Yet her tamales get the stamp of approval from the Mexican diaspora, who travel from as far as Adelaide to get their tamale fix.
Maybe it’s that one secret ingredient that has her devotees hooked.
“To know that they're feeling the love that goes into my cooking – that’s how I would describe [my work],” Cienfuegos says. “I'm not a chef. I don't even know how to cut an onion! I just love what I do.”
463 Marrickville Road, Dulwich Hill, NSW, 0430 876 765
Tue – Wed 8am–6pm, Thu 8am–8pm, Fri – Sun 8am–6pm
