Another fine Mex

When most people think of Mexican food, they think of tacos, guacamole and enchiladas washed down with a jug of ice-cold Dos Equis. But, then, most people haven't been to the Frontera Grill or Topolobampo. These adjacent Mexican restaurants in downtown Chicago have been causing a stir since 1987, when owners Rick and Deann Bayless opened the former to coincide with the publication of their book, Authentic Mexican. Two years later, in response to the overwhelming popularity of the place, they opened Topolobampo next door, exposing diners to Mexico's even more intricate regional dishes.

The critics went wild. In 1991 Topolobampo was chosen by Esquire magazine as one of the top new restaurants in the USA. It was the first "ethnic" restaurant to be awarded three-and-a-half stars (from a possible four) by the Chicago Tribune, and in 1995 the prestigious James Beard Foundation voted Bayless National Chef of the Year.

And the accolades are still rolling in. The latest to be bestowed on Bayless is the Robert Mondavi Culinary Art of Excellence. Part of the prize was a huge oil painting of Bayless in his whites, which is propped up in his office. He seems vaguely embarrassed by it. "I don't want you to think that I always have a picture of myself lying around," he says.

In addition to the critical acclaim, Bayless has also acquired television celebrity status. Apart from regular guest slots, he's working on 26 half-hour shows on Mexican cooking. There's a book to go with it, to add to the three already published, one of which, Mexican Kitchen, was named Best Cookbook of the Year in the respected Julia Child Awards (a British version was published two years ago by Absolute Press, priced £20).

Bayless is up there with Charlie Trotter, another Chicago boy, among the handful of people who have put the city on the global gastronomic map, and is widely recognised as having raised Mexican food out of the mid-spend level.

He was born in Oklahoma, where his parents ran a restaurant specialising in barbecued food. He helped out at his parents' place, but his Mexican expertise has its roots in a five-year spell of living in the country following a university course studying Spanish and Latin American Culture at the University of Michigan, where he catered to support his studies. The course entailed spending a year in Mexico, and it was then that Bayless decided that he would rather popularise the country's food than write a thesis about its language.

Testing recipes

In 1981 he and his wife, Deann, whom he had met at university, put everything in storage and spent the next four years travelling around Mexico, testing recipes and writing. They explored town by town to see what locals ate in markets, on food stalls and in small, family-owned restaurants, logging up some 35,000 miles. It's all in their first book, Authentic Mexico: Regional cooking from the heart of Mexico, published by Morrow.

With the book came the Frontera Grill, and the queues. Unlike its smarter sister, Topolobampo, you can't pre-book at the Frontera. "There's always a line at 11.30am," says a bemused Bayless. "And on Saturday nights, when we open the door at 5pm, the queues go right down the back alley. It's almost twice as long as the volume of people we can get in here. The locals call us the yuppie soup kitchen."

When diners finally enter, they find themselves in a boisterous, 65-seater restaurant, with colourful walls, whimsical pottery and ornamental wrought iron. The 70-seater Topolobampo is on the same site, accessed through thick curtains. With muted orange walls and some rather good contemporary Mexican paintings, its mix of comfortable banquettes, wooden seating and vases projects a more urbane image than in its sibling.

The Topolobampo menu is more sophisticated. "We spend more time on the dishes," explains Bayless. Covers are half that of Frontera, which turns tables four times a night on busy weekends, though tables still turn about two-and-a-half times even in Topolobampo.

Despite such phenomenal success, Bayless has never been tempted to take the concept out of Chicago. "I'm asked a lot," he says, "but I'm not a multiple restaurant type of person. I have a lot of varied interests and, while it's fun to create a restaurant, I've got to manage it hands-on and in a very labour-intensive kind of way. The money men tell us it's stupid, but I do this not because I want to become rich, I do it because I love to cook and I love food, and I love the impact we can have on our community."

Bayless has a staggering number of kitchen staff - 27 in total - which goes some way to explaining the sophisticated nature of the food. Salsas are the backbone of Mexican cooking in the same way that sauces are in French cuisine. Chillies are up there, too, as an integral part of this Central American food style. Both define the character of a dish, as well as marking the differences between Mexico's numerous regions.

Range of flavours

Fresh, dried and smoked, chillies come in a dizzying array of varieties. And, contrary to popular belief, if they are used properly in a dish, they shouldn't have you grabbing for a glass of water. Chillies can contribute a startling range of flavours to a dish, from a sweet smokiness to a deep, rich robustness. "Chilli is not considered a spice in Mexico," explains Bayless. "It's a vegetable. Most [non-Mexican] people don't understand their different flavours."

Knowledge can be acquired, though, either through sampling Bayless's own expertise - for instance, the pato al pasillo on the dinner menu at Topolobampo. Amish country duck breast comes in a robust sauce of dark pasilla chillies, garlic and hazelnuts, with braised chard and fingerling potatoes ($13 [£8.78]). Or you could sign up for a Bayless chilli seminar. He holds them twice a year at the Culinary Institute of America in California's Napa Valley. Students get to eat raw, fresh chillies, then munch on them in various stages of preparation - dried, toasted, soaked, puréed, worked into various dishes.

Bayless chose Chicago for his restaurants for a couple of reasons. The city has the second largest Mexican population in the USA and, says Bayless, two-thirds of the city's wholesalers are Mexican. His staff is half-Mexican, too. "And my wife's family are here," he says.

Bayless doesn't really have a favourite dish but he does have a favourite region in Oaxaca, the mole capital of Mexico. A popular mole, or cooked chilli sauce, at Frontera is one made with green pumpkin seeds. "It's a very traditional Oaxaca mole," he explains. In December, it was on the menu with grilled Gulf shrimp with roasted chayote and zucchini ($13.50 [£9.12]). Bayless spends every Christmas in Oaxaca - with his wife, daughter Lane, and a few friends - exploring the city's restaurants and street stalls. He returns after each trip with the inspiration to create completely new menus. "I could spend the rest of my life in Mexico and I wouldn't begin to unearth all the regional dishes," he says. "We have 500 dishes in our repertoire alone." The menus change once a month.

The impact Bayless has had on his more classically oriented contemporaries is undeniable, but he has a word of warning for those with loftier ambitions for "real" Mexican. "If you're looking for artifice in this food, you cannot create real flavour," he says. "It wrecks the cuisine - it all gets muddy and lost. I try to cook as appealingly as possible without sacrificing taste."