Julian Medina's 'Toloache' to Feature Elite Olive Oils

By Michael Goodwin

Mar. 31, 2013 13:00 UTC

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Some of the 700 olive oils competing in the New York International Olive Oil Competition will be featured at Toloache, a Mexican bistro with three locations in Manhattan.

NYIOOC, APRIL 16 – 18, 2013

Run by chef-owner Julian Medina, originally from Mexico City, Toloache will feature contest entries in special pairing dishes between April 15 and 19, the week of the competition.

Medina will show how extra virgin olive oils can enhance and elevate his contemporary Mexican cuisine that puts focus on fresh, seasonal ingredients.

Sam Sifton, writing for The New York Times, wrote that Medina “is a marvelous interpreter of guacamole, of ceviche, of finishing-school tacos and wood-oven quesadillas.”

Toloache’s menu features such exciting dishes as black-truffle quesadillas and grasshopper tacos.

The restaurant opened to great acclaim in 2007. Toloache’s original Theatre District location, as Mike Peed observed writing for The New Yorker, was named for a “flowering plant famed in Mexico for its use in love potions.”

Chef Medina, who competed on the popular television program Iron Chef America is sure to employ his creativity in his olive oil pairings.

Metromix New York named Medina “Chef of the Year” in 2011, asserting that “his cooking embodies the depth and complexity of today’s New York culinary scene: highbrow meets low-key, uptown meets downtown, local meets global.”

Medina is also the Executive Chef at Yerba Buena, with two locations in Lower Manhattan, and Coppelia.