A RESTAURANT WITH A GLOBAL LATIN FLAIR
WORDS BY NATHAN MATTISE
Tatu Herrera Photo by Kimberly Suta
Between pop-ups, cooking demos, community work and Folklores Coffee House, Tatu Herrera has been a fixture of the San Antonio restaurant scene for so long that it’s hard to believe he’s never truly had his own restaurant to run.
This beloved chef changed that at the end of 2023 when he partnered with mixologist Hector Vargas to open Diez Flores, a new tapas bar adjacent to Southtown and focused on flavors from 10 iconic Latin cuisines (Mexican, Brazilian, Spanish, Venezuelan, Colombian, Dominican, Argentinian, Peruvian, Cuban and Puerto Rican). Tapas like tostones fritos de caribe (fried tostones with chimichurri rojo) and pancenta de Argentina (sliced pork belly with Argentine chimichurri dipping sauce and crushed corn nuts) are both unique and scrumptious.
The challenge of launching a restaurant may be new, but if you know anything about Herrera, the vibe at Diez Flores should be delightfully familiar. The restaurant emphasizes the two things he’s built his reputation on — creativity and community.
“Did I want to do a restaurant now? Man, no, what I really wanted to do was sandwiches — over-thetop sandwiches like that place Turkey and the Wolf in New Orleans,” Herrera jokes. “Luckily, my partner here said to do what I’m most interested in.”
Not every tapas place offers a full menu of sandwiches alongside those signature small plates, but Herrera thrives at dreaming up one-of-akind bites within even the most unusual parameters. You can bet sandwiches like Herrera’s version of a Cubano, called Calle Ocho Cubano, and made with roasted pork, sliced ham, dill pickles and Swiss cheese, with a butter-lime-garlic spread on a baguette is something you won’t find anywhere else in San Antonio. Between his Tatu’s Food Debauchery catering business or any of his numerous pop-ups around town, Herrera’s developed full menus from themes like “Star Wars” and “Titanic.”
With Diez Flores, the chef says the team approached him with only the idea to do wide-reaching Latin cuisine focusing on tapas-style dishes. That meant if Herrera was in, he’d have creative license with the menu while the overall business wouldn’t have to deal with the immense overhead and life-and-death margins of a new restaurant.
Jibarito Marinated Beef Sandwich
Fast forward, and Herrera’s sandwiches are featured on the menu right next to traditional tapas like ceviche and tostones. His favorites include the Sanguche De Peru (classic egg salad done Peruvian style) and the Choripan De Argentina .
“Think of it as a chorizo that’s seared with bread on top, all on the flat – top, then there’s melted cheese on top — that’s it,” explains Herrera. “It’s so comforting to me — the combo of chorizo, cheese and bread — because it’s literally what I grew up eating. For a lot of chefs, when you create menus, you go from memories, childhood stuff. My mom worked, so it was a fend-for-yourself kind of thing, and I worked with what I had at the house. So it’s been cool seeing sandwiches become a thing in the chef scene.”
Herrera has plans to regularly invite guest chefs for various Latin American holiday menus, in order to flex his culinary creativity regularly. The rest of Diez Flores’ opening menu comes from Herrera’s desire to try new combinations. Those plantains for the tostones, for instance, will serve as the basis for a pancake when Herrera starts brunch service later this year. And today, the ingredient shows up in the tapas section in an unexpected way — as the main companion for Diez Flores’ chimichurri-and-olive hummus.
“I was a chef de cuisine, so I was always taking cues from my chef,” Herrera says, referring to his decade spent at the Grand Hyatt San Antonio River Walk during the early 2000s. “But here, it’s me — now it’s my ideas, and if a dish fails, it’s on me. So it’s been good to see people coming in from Colombia or South America and enjoying this food. I tell everyone, ‘We’re not trying to be 100 percent authentic. This is my take on certain parts of Latin American cuisine.’ We’re able to combine flavors and cultures through the tapas that we have.”
Beyond the food, Herrera’s other undeniable strength has been his community focus, in no small part because Herrera has grown Folklores into an essential community hub. At the cafe, he’s given young chefs a space to pop-up and learn, and he’s held annual days where all profits go directly to staff. Outside of the culinary community, Herrera used the cafe as a place to create and distribute meals to needy seniors in the early stages of the pandemic, and he consistently hosts neighborhood-focused opportunities like the Es Tu Vida professional learning series.
Those kinds of initiatives will eventually be a part of Diez Flores too. As they did with the menu, Diez Flores’ leadership is empowering Herrera to pursue what he’s most passionate about. The chef has visions of tailoring his outreach this time toward young chefs and students who might be interested in culinary careers, perhaps by using the restaurant’s off-days to bring in interested kids for cooking lessons and pop-up opportunities.
“For me, it was real hard coming up in the chef world. And now I’ve judged a handful of high school competitions, and one thing I see a lot is that many of the students who want to become cooks don’t have the support,” says Herrera. “So, if I can be that person to guide them, to set them in the right direction … I mean, I wish I had that for me. Seeing a professional kitchen firsthand opens your mind — you know you can do it versus seeing it on TV or just being in a classroom. Once you’re in a professional kitchen, you know that’s what you want to do.”
About the Contributor
Journalist Nathan Mattise (@nathanmattise) is always working to perfect his sourdough bagels. He also enjoys bocce, amaro, road trips, and a good playlist
