Some of the Greatest Horchata
is at For All Things Good, in Brooklyn
Matt Diaz’s molino and café, For All Things Good, makes a lot of great things, all of it supported by his excellent, fresh masa.
The masa you’ll get there, and all of the things made with it, is the real deal. Matt had traveled enough in Mexico to know the difference. Frustrated by how hard it was to find masa locally that matched his taste memory, Matt had the wildly impractical idea to try to make his own.
I met up with Matt at the original location of FATG in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, a few months ago, and he explained the intense learning process he put himself through during the pandemic, when he started nixtamalizing and milling corn every day in his apartment. In his apartment. At the time, Matt was working in the wine industry, remotely. When the rest of the 50 states were fixated on sourdough starter, Matt was cooking corn and milling it to make batch after batch of masa.
Matt will tell you himself that his quest for fresh masa turned into an obsession. Logically, the masa led to tortillas. Over time, the tortillas he was tinkering with gained a following, then took on traction. And finally, at the height of the pandemic, Matt opened a molino with an attached café to share what he refers to as this “art form” with his guests. “If we were going to do this,” he says, “it needed to be the highest quality.” The masa, made with heirloom Tuxpeño corn, is everywhere on the FATG menu: tetelas, totopos, tlayuditas, memelas. You can even purchase masa by the pound and fresh tortillas by the dozen.
I wish I could tell you how to make masa like this at home. I can’t. Matt embodies the combination of obsessiveness, mad genius, and stubbornness that is required to master a technique like masa-making. I’ve detected this character cuvée among mad bakers, coffee obsessives, and also in my late uncle Renato, who could talk your ear off about fly fishing. Matt has nothing but reverence for the traditional methods of making masa and sees his efforts as a daily quest for excellence. If you’re in Brooklyn, go to For All Things Good!
One day I hope you’ll sample the masa program there. To hold you over, Matt generously shared a different recipe from his menu that we can all make at home: HORCHATA. And make it we must, constantly, all summer long.
If by some stroke of misfortune you’ve never had horchata, it is a type of agua fresca made by blending rice that’s been soaked in water. The resulting elixer is usually sweetened, and often flavored with cinnamon, preferably canela. At For All Things Good, Jasmine rice is soaked overnight, then blended with oat milk, which gives it lovely richness and weight (other alt milks will work, too, or water). Vegan by accident! Matt chooses not to strain his horchata, which amplifies the creaminess, and agave (not too much) is Matt’s sweetener of choice. There’s some vanilla and cinnamon in there, too. Scrumptious as is, poured over ice —or not!—the horchata goes next-level when combined with either espresso or cold brew. If you’re not drooling yet, I don’t know you.
FATG’s Lachata Iced is the only beverage I’m bringing to the beach now, and forever1.
Gotta go, busy soaking rice.
xoCLM
TAKE ME TO THE RECIPE, STAT!
Also it has rice, and you all know how I feel about rice.