The Valley has a long and storied history with Mexican food, written largely in two chapters: Sonoran and New Mexican. Roberto Santibañez wants to introduce you to the rest of the story.

The Mexico City native, who trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, has received international acclaim for the way he creates classic Mexican dishes with non-traditional ingredients and French cooking techniques.

In 1996, he introduced his sophisticated nueva cocina-style cooking to American diners at Fonda San Miguel in Austin, Texas. Three years later, he was hired as culinary director of Rosa Mexicano, considered by many to be New York’s finest Mexican restaurant.

Santibañez left Rosa Mexicano last year for his biggest challenge yet: Creating the menu for legendary musician Carlos Santana’s new Mexican restaurant Maria Maria (read my First Taste).

(Photo at left: Maria’s Chile Relleno, ancho chiles stuffed with roasted zucchini, red onions and potatoes served over melted cheese and roasted tomato chipotle sauce topped with crispy sweet potatoes and zucchini.)

I sat down with 44-year-old chef after Maria Maria’s grand opening Monday night at Tempe Marketplace.

What’s at the heart of your philosophy about Mexican food?

“’There are many Mexicos,’ one writer said. But there are two kinds of Mexican food. It’s a little tricky and maybe a little delicate to say, but even before the arrival of the Spanish there were two cuisines: that of the indigenous people and the cuisine that the Spanish ate.

“What we now know as Mexican cooking is a pretty recent creation. At the beginning, the Spanish would never touch what the indigenous people would eat, and the indigenous people hated what the Spanish people ate. It didn’t start to mix immediately when the Spanish arrived. It took a couple hundred years.”

Are there still distinct elements of the two?

“Very much. I was born in a household of that division. My grandfather died without eating chiles. He was a white man and he never ate any chiles, and he was over three generations Mexican. He ate what white people ate — bread, olive oil.

(Photo at right: Surf and Turf, grilled adobo marinated skirt steak and jumbo shrimp over roasted guajillo tomatillo sauce enchiladas, topped with cotija cheese, chopped onions and cilantro.)

“He married a Mexican woman from Veracruz, where they would eat all these other things. At the table, my grandfather would have French wine and bread and veal or pork or whatever kind of stew. At the other end of the table, my aunts had a salsa and a molcajete. Those are basically what the separations are.”

How do you reconcile those separations in your cooking?

“I think, as many in my field, we’re still discovering all these wonderful mixtures we can do. We already have many, and the sauce making of Mexico is an incredibly rich gastronomical culture. But I think we’re still making changes. We’re still making additions and seeing what works best.

“There’s a platform of flavors, textures and colors that we all agree, as Mexicans, that we like. I focus on the palate and the very traditional flavor profiles, color profiles, textural profiles, and I create on that.”

When you were asked to create the menu for Maria Maria, what was the concept?

“I think you have to account for many things: the look, the informality that we all agreed we should have. A little like me, Carlos comes from a mixture of people. That mixture hasn’t been explored very much.

(Photo at left: Chicken Enchiladas “Suiza,” soft corn tortillas filled with shredded chicken covered with a roasted tomato cream sauce, baked with Swiss cheese, topped with crispy tortillas, crumbled pasilla chile, chopped onion and cilantro.)

“Mexican restaurants in America have insisted on salsas and enchiladas. There’s a lot more than that. There are things like braised pork, one of our best dishes. It doesn’t necessarily have to have chiles in it. It’s just a deliciously Mexican technique for braising pork. Those things are not shown as much here in the states.”

What do you think is the biggest misconception about Mexican food?

“I think one of the main ones is that Mexican food is really bad for you. A foie gras with a reduction of veal and wine is no better for you than a sauce made of tomatillos. The whole Mexican repertoire of salsas is based on vegetable matter and it’s healthy. You just need to know what you’re eating and how to eat it.

“If you come in and have guacamole, eat all the chips, have enchiladas and then have chocolate cake, you’ll end up feeling pretty bad. But not because it’s Mexican food. You ate too much.”

Is that the fault of diners or the restaurants?

“I think it’s a little bit of everybody’s fault. I think we, as guests, need to realize it, and restaurateurs also need to tell you when you order a little too much food. I think, overall, Americans are over-eating any cuisine and we need to start toning down.”

Speaking of which, Mexico recently was identified as the world’s second-fattest country now …

“It’s crazy. We have broken the traditions of the Mexican people living in the old days, eating their ancient foods. Nowadays, it’s just a floodgate that’s opened. We are having the same problems that America has: People are not being conscientous of what they’re eating.

“It afflicts Mexico in a very terrible way. It’s full of McDonald’s and Pizza Huts. Every city has one of those. Kentucky Fried Chicken is a snack in the middle of the afternoon!”

Are there any Mexican dishes Americans just don’t get?

“I think moles. I think everybody in America thinks mole is a dark brown chocolate sauce that crazy Mexicans eat. They don’t realize that mole means ‘a mixture of things.’ There are hundreds of different moles.

“Moles are like curries from Asia. There are green curries in Thailand that are like a soup, and there are yellow, spicy curries in India that are as thick as mole. So we have thin soups we call moles — green and red and they’re very varied — and we have thick moles that are brown, dark red and even darker with chocolate.

“But the moles with chocolate are basically two or three out of hundreds.”

Do Americans have a greater preference for spicy foods than Mexicans? Or maybe they have a higher tolerance?

“I think it’s preference and tolerance. I think the whiter you are, there’s a gene that you have that makes you want more spiciness. I’m cooking spicier than I do in Mexico. My family and friends tell me, ‘Wow, that’s really spicy.’ And I say, ‘Well, this the result of me living in America for 12 years.’”

Has that changed the types of dishes you create?

“It doesn’t change the basic recipe. You just have to be more careful with the chile and how you treat it. If you use it straightforward, it’s going to be a little spicier.”

After having restaurants in Mexico City, was there anything about the U.S. market that has surprised you?

“I’ve always been surprised at how knowledgable and sophisticated the American public has become. We’ve always underestimated it, I think, in Mexico. My friends said, ‘Oh no, you’re going to go make food for the Americans?’ And that’s not true. American are a people that are demanding. They want the real thing. That’s wonderful.”

Are there advantages to opening a Mexican restaurant in an area like the Valley?

“Yes, I think people already are ‘trained’ to some of the Mexican flavors, so it’s easier for them to understand. They’ll see our food and say, ‘Oh, that’s different,’ because they’ve never had an enchilada like the ones we do, topped with so many more trinkets. We add a little bit more luxury. They’re used to seeing that enchilada flat, sauced and that’s it.”

What’s the next hot ingredient or trend in Mexican cooking?

“That’s going to be big like chipotles? I think people are getting into guajillos. Everything you see is guajillo-marinated or ‘guajillo pineapple’ or ‘guajillo this.’ And serrano, like in the chile serrano. It’s also catching on.

“I also think there’s more higher-end Mexican appreciation. There are restaurants with tableclothes that serve really great Mexican. I think that’s a trend. I think it’s only starting. We’re going to see higher-and-higher-end Mexican restaurants.”

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