A Postcard, A Recipe and A Revelation
How Vecino’s salsa macha became a lesson in flavor.
I spent 20 minutes trying to guess the ingredients of the salsa macha at Vecino.
On a recent visit to the upscale modern Mexican restaurant in Detroit, I tasted and tasted, trying to determine which chilis created the subtle heat and smokiness? Where was the nuttiness coming from? A nut, seed or both? What makes it so textural and velvety that I want to pour it over everything from eggs to meat?
Vecino opened its doors in April 2024 and has been making headlines ever since. The honors keep piling up: Eater Detroit’s Best New Restaurant in 2024, The Detroit Free Press Restaurant of the Year, along with a nod from James Beard as a semi-finalist for Best New Restaurant in 2025.
It was one of the owners, Adriana Wietrzynski-Jimenez who came my rescue. After hearing my questions, she smiled, confirming that they get asked this a lot.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, and headed back to the busy, open format kitchen.
She returned holding a Vecino postcard, with the macha recipe handwritten on the back. Even better, it included an invitation to come and see how it’s made. Of course, I jumped at the chance.
Why does a salsa matter?
This was my opportunity to learn how to make an authentic recipe created by the award-winning chef from Mexico City, Edgar Torres. And because salsas are one of the pillars of Mexican cuisine, a private lesson would be another step in my own culinary journey. Salsas are used in most dishes, as a primary ingredient, finishing sauce or dip. Styles differ regionally, but salsas are intended to pull all the flavors of a dish together, taking it from good to exceptional.
Torres credits his grandmother for his decision to become a chef. During his childhood in Mexico City, he loved seeing how her cooking would bring their entire family together. After finishing culinary school in Cancun, he left Mexico to start his career, working in different restaurants, on a cruise ship, and with the luxury Oberoi Hotel Group in Dubai.
When he returned, he moved between Mexico and New York, before landing in Chicago at Chef Grant Achatz’s Alinea. Refining his skills, he scaled the kitchen brigade like a shooting star, rising from the lowest rung as commis to chef de cuisine. After helping with Vecino’s opening, owners Luke Wietrzynski and Adriana Wietrzynski-Jimenez offered him the permanent role as executive chef.
A Note About Salsas
The flavors of a salsa are primarily determined by the style of preparation. Salsa ingredients can be either fire or dry roasted, boiled, raw, or fried. Roasted or cooked salsas concentrate the sugars of the vegetables, and tend to be savory, smokey and more mellow. Alternatively, boiled salsas, like salsa Verde or salsa taqueria become tangy and briny.
The raw or fresh salsas, like a pico de gallo, differ from traditional styles as they are chopped and mixed, not blended. These are meant to be eaten quickly and provide a bright and acidic pop. When the ingredients are fried, the oil contributes a glossy silkiness, which I learned from Torres, is the case with the salsa macha.
In the kitchen at Vecino
Torres was waiting for me on a recent Thursday afternoon near a display of dishes with a welcoming smile. In front of him sat nine bowls filled with colorful ingredients, or the macha recipe, deconstructed. The flavors I had been chasing over dinner fell into place. Macha is made with dried chilies nuts and seeds, unlike traditional tomato flavored salsas.
I found there are four dried chilis — d’arbol, morita, ancho, and guajillo — responsible for that mild heat and beautiful smokiness. The nuttiness is contributed not just by peanuts, but pumpkin seeds and sesame seeds. The fried garlic offered the sweetness, with lime and salt to enliven all the components.
The chef led me to a pan on the stove that was hot and three=quarters full of olive oil. He started by explaining that this macha technique requires patience because each ingredient is fried separately. They’ve tried faster methods, like cooking ingredients together, but with disappointing results. The benefit of doing it this way is that each ingredient has its own time to infuse the oil, and each flavor builds on the last. It results in a highly seasoned oil that is a foundational part of the macha recipe. The oil intensifies the robust flavors from the toasted crunchy ingredients, which is what makes the macha at Vecino so special.
He took the ancho peppers and slid them into the oil, turning them, for a quick five to 10 seconds. Torres uses olive oil, carefully maintaining it between 320 and 350 degrees to avoid burning. “Each chili burns at a different temperature,” he said. “If you overcook any of them, they get super bitter.”
Shaking off the excess oil, he transferred the peppers to a large steel pot, then started on the remaining ingredients. One after one, they came out of the oil and into the stainless container. As he worked, it created a colorful mosaic of deep red peppers, yellow peanuts, golden garlic, and white and green seeds. Once the components cooled, he combined them with the oil and used an immersion blender to break up the mixture.
Torres poured some of the macha into a bowl and dragged some chips over for a taste. It was silky and filled with texture from the small, suspended flecks of the fried ingredients. Confessing that the macha is his favorite, especially on fish tacos, he uses it on everything from avocado toast, quesadillas, and meats.
“That’s what I like about salsa macha,” he said. “You can use it on anything, and it will taste good.” This, as we know, is the hallmark of every great Mexican salsa.
Still slightly warm, it was every bit as delicious as I remembered. Today’s batch would only yield two quarts, but the restaurant goes through four to five a day. Macha is just one of three salsas Vecino makes fresh daily, all to complement their menu offerings. The salsa verde is based on tomatillos, jalapenos and garlic, and salsa tatemada, made with tomatoes, onions, tomatillos and chilis.
Vecino’s menu calls for some hard-to-find ingredients such as the different varieties chilis and the masa he imports from Mexico for tortillas. Which doesn’t deter Torres. “Some things are difficult to source, but I won’t stop until I get them,” he said. “I want to have the right things to be able to show and offer authentic Mexican food.”
Vecino is located at 4100 Third St. in Midtown Detroit. Hours are 5 to 10 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays and 5 to 9 p.m. Sundays. Reservations are recommended and can be made online at vecinodetroit.com. Contact (313) 500-1615 or hola@vecinodetroit.com for more information.