Doña-Magnolia embraces a mixture of culinary traditions and flavor experimentation

Doña-Magnolia, which opened in March in the restaurant space of Hotel Indigo, doesn’t just borrow from several food traditions. Italian pastas receive Mexican spices, tortas come with Indian fillings, ceviche is infused with Asian flavors. Chef Manuel Montijo Jr. wouldn’t have it any different – he’s been experimenting with flavors from the beginning.

The summer going into his freshman year of high school, Montijo (or as his friends call him, because of his hair: Curly) woke up early nearly every morning and watched the Food Network – shows with celebrity chefs like Emeril Lagasse and Bobby Flay. He was hooked, and so he enrolled in all the food and nutrition classes available at Pasco High School.

“You would have to leave campus from high school, go to a specialty kitchen in downtown Pasco, and you would be able to work in the actual industrial-sized kitchen with other companies that were like currently working out of that kitchen,” Montijo said.

Montijo was making ice cream sandwiches, cookies and other baked goods, which were sold in the cafeteria during lunch hours. His favorite part was trying new flavors and techniques.

After high school, Montijo worked in hospitality, but he was having trouble getting the type of experience he wanted, so when he was 22, he enrolled in the Oregon Culinary Institute.

“To be in a city like Portland, that’s very food-driven, that rubs off on you,” he said. “You get to grow, work with certain people that that’s all you breathe and live is food.”

After school, Montijo moved back to the Tri-Cities to work, and he was often working in multiple restaurants at once.

In 2017, Montijo started at Fredy’s Steakhouse in Kennewick as a line cook. This steakhouse was owned by Fredy Martinez, chef and owner at Molé Restaurant in Kendall Yards.

“After a month or so, I became the sous chef, and then within the month of that, I became his head chef, and that’s where our relationship blossomed more,” Montijo said.

Montijo said he was able to move up the ranks quickly because “with any restaurant I’ve ever worked at, the passion has always been there to showcase the talents and skills I possess.

“You acquire it as you keep going,” he said. “In different kitchens, you pick up certain skills from certain restaurants and chefs.”

“I’ve always thought he’s a nice guy,” Martinez, a co-owner of Doña-Magnolia, said. “So I was always keeping in mind for maybe one day, if I have a new business or something, I would like to invite him.”

Curtis Rystadt, the owner/operator of Hotel Indigo, located at 110 S. Madison Street, approached Martinez about filling the restaurant space of his hotel, which used to be occupied by Magnolia American Brasserie. The two met when Rystadt was dining at Molé.

“I like to give opportunities to those people that I see that work hard,” Rystadt said. “I believe Fredy and his family work hard.”

When Rystadt approached Martinez about the space, Martinez instead thought of Montijo.

Montijo was hesitant – he wasn’t picturing the large space when Martinez said a restaurant attached to a hotel – but when he saw it in person, he was blown away, and happy to move to Spokane.

“I’ve always known that in a bigger city, I can do a lot more and showcase more of my skills and talent,” Montijo said.

Montijo described his food as a fusion.

“But that always kept me more intrigued and more interested in cooking, because the palate gets kind of bored after the certain kind of stuff over and over and over,” he said.

He learned this from a food truck he operated, called Only Tacos.

“That’s what we stuck to, and for a food truck, that concept works,” Montijo said. “But then, after a while, you’re like, man, I would like to do something else, outside of tacos.”

Montijo said people sometimes have a hesitancy to mixing different types of foods together. His strategy?

“I think if you do it right and not mask all the dishes with a bunch of different crazy ingredients and stuff, and keep it very simple, it works. It’ll work out,” he said.

For example, Montijo says he uses Mexican oregano in the marinara used for the restaurant’s arancini.

“You can taste the difference because the oregano is a little more pungent, a little stronger on there, but it complements very well with the pesto, the marinara, the risotto,” he said.

Another example is the ceviche. Instead of doing a lime marinade cure for the tuna and salmon, they use soy sauce and sesame oil. This is his favorite item on the menu currently, but he’s planning to make the menu more complex in September.

And he isn’t completely sick of tacos, either. He hopes to put them on the menu, complete with his made-from-scratch multi-colored masa. When he’s trying out new flavors, his wife is his guinea pig. The two both come from the same coastal state in Mexico – Sinaloa – but met in Pasco. They have two children.

Montijo intends to use the restaurant’s rentable private room for brew master and winemaker dinners, .

Montijo keeps hearing about FX’s show “The Bear,” a fine dining drama led by actor Jeremy Allen White, but he hasn’t watched it, because he prefers to watch shows once they’re complete so he can binge them.

But “certain people have told me that they don’t watch it just because they’ve seen a little bit, and just the anxiety just goes up the roof,” Montijo said. “… I feel like I’m in my own Bear right now, at this moment, trying to re-establish this, rebrand it, and make something happen here in the area.

“I feel like I’m already living that kind of moment.”