“I will save the American people from bad Mexican food,” said Armando Guerrero, restaurateur and gastronomic virtuoso behind House of Corn at 414 E 200 S in downtown Salt Lake City.

Guerrero was introduced to Americanized-Mexican food through his roommates during college at BYU-Idaho. He started his college career in civil engineering, but was having trouble transferring credits from one college to another in Mexico. He was admitted to BYU-I and started working on an automotive engineering degree.

“Most of my roommates were American people. I wanted to try what was here. That’s when I got disappointed,” Guerrero said.

He laughed as he recalled his first ‘Mexican’ meal. “It was a smothered sweet burrito, and I thought, ‘Who the hell taught you how to do it like this?’”

Authentic Cuernavaca

Guerrero suggests that things might be different in northern Mexico, but in his hometown of Cuernavaca, burritos are filled only with rice and beans. Tortillas are made from corn, and sugar never mixes with meat.

“Real Mexican food is based on corn. If you add sugar, the grandmas will say, ‘Stop doing that s***. Are you making food for your dog?’”

When he discovered that he couldn’t find good food in the US, he turned to his family for help. “I started calling my grandma and Felita; they started sending me recipes. I can find all the Mexican ingredients here even at Walmart. [But], I had another issue. I walked to the tortillas [in the store] and I found out why the American people don’t like corn tortillas. They taste really, really bad.“

Initially, Guerrero attempted to make tortillas using the readily available corn flour, but he found it just wasn’t the same. During summer breaks, he learned the process at home with his family. He even bought a Mexican-made grinder and had it shipped to his apartment in Idaho.

“When I finally got the mill, I started making tortillas and tamales: blue corn with red sauce and pork, white corn with green sauce with chicken,” Guerrero said. After his classes were done for the week, he sold his food door-to-door to fellow students.

While Utahns find a soda shop on every corner, in Cuernavaca and nearby towns, you’ll discover a tortilleria (like a bakery, but only offers tortillas) at every turn. These shops can sell up to 120 pounds of corn tortillas an hour.

“Corn tortillas represent the daily basis of food,” Guerrero said. “The elders won’t eat their food if there’s no tortillas on the table.”

There are also grinding mills for your own cooked corn. Most people then take it home and further work it with a metate (mealing stone). 

Corn tortillas aren’t just food for the poor or rural villages; even big cities and wealthy communities have a daily supply of fresh tortillas.

Tortilla Process

Making tortillas is a “simple, but tedious process,” Guerrero said. All you need is corn, water and a little food-grade calcium lime. 

When you get to the counter at House of Corn, Guerrero has three big pots of freshly cooked corn, a grinding mill and press. You can see first hand the fastidious process of making tortillas from scratch. There are three colors of corn: yellow, red and purple. All the corn comes in from New Mexico.

First, you mix the lime with water until it looks like milk. Then add the corn and take it to the fire. Once the skins start to peel off, you let the mixture sit for at least 8 hours. Hydrate it to turn off the calcium. The kernels must be half-way cooked. Too soft and the dough is chewy. Too hard and the tortilla will be sandy and fall apart. It’s a delicate process that takes practice and balance.

After he graduated in 2019, Guerrero moved to Salt Lake City for an internship and got a job at a restaurant while continuing to sell his homemade goods on the weekends. The plan was no longer engineering — he wanted to open a restaurant.

“I knew I needed to do something about the food and tortillas,” Guerrero said. Then along came the pandemic. 

Setting Up Shop

House of Corn’s first location was in Sandy, Utah. The pandemic was hard on every business property owner so he was able to negotiate for cheaper rent. He opened the doors in August 2020.

During the first 18 months there were flooding and ceiling problems. During the peak of their popularity, House of Corn had to close for two weeks to fix everything. It was in the same complex as the Sandy 9 movie theater and Beehive School of Science and Technology. Those two anchors shut their doors, there were problems with the landlord, and there wasn’t enough support.

“When we closed the store in Sandy, I didn’t know if I wanted to do this again,” Guerrero said. “When you close a business, it feels like someone in your close family just died. I was not doing good.”

The month after the Sandy location closed, he received messages from customers and former employees: ‘Dude, I miss your tacos,’ ‘Why did you close, the food was so good.’

After a month of recovery, encouragement from others, and thorough reflection, he finally found a promising new location in downtown SLC, where he has attracted a steady stream of customers, new and old. 

The restaurant business can be quite precarious, with many challenges that make success difficult. However, Guerrero remains optimistic about the future.  

After all, who doesn’t want to be saved from mediocre Mexican food?

Feature Image: Owner of House of Corn, Armando Guerrero, stirring a fresh batch of corn for the day’s tortillas. Photo by Erin Dixon.