Cozobi Fonda Fina: Downtown Boulder’s new Mexican eatery celebrates corn-centric cuisine and owner’s story

Sometimes it seems that every time you turn around in Boulder, one restaurant closes and another opens. The latest to venture onto Boulder’s dicey restaurant scene is Cozobi Fonda Fina at 909 Walnut Street, in the space that was briefly occupied by Oaxaca-themed Masas & Agaves.

Cozobi owner and chef Johnny Curiel took over Masas’ lease in late May, naming his new restaurant after the god of corn in Mexico’s indigenous Zapotec language to highlight the importance of corn in his menu.

Masas & Agaves opened only last August to great fanfare, but this spring, owner David Mendoza offered Curiel the opportunity to take over the lease. Management could not be reached for comment about Masas’ closure. An Instagram post described the restaurant’s end as “bittersweet” due to the hand-off to Curiel. 

Curiel jumped at the offer despite having just opened a new restaurant, Alma Fonda Fina, with his wife, Kasie, last December in Denver’s Lower Highlands neighborhood. Cozobi “happened organically,” Curiel said. “The timing was right.”

Another potential hiccup was that Alma Fonda Fina had drawn a lawsuit from Lotus Concepts, for whose My Neighbor Felix concept Kasie Curiel had previously worked as executive general manager, and with which she had signed a noncompete agreement. In April, the parties settled amicably out of court. Johnny Curiel was never part of the lawsuit.

Kasie Curiel remains with Alma Fonda Fina, along with her husband, but Johnny Curiel emphasized that his wife is not involved with the new Boulder restaurant. Ownership is also separate.

At 909 Walnut Street in Boulder, some things will remain familiar when Cozobi opens on July 10: Both Masas and Cozobi focus on Mexican cuisine, and some features of Masas’ decor will remain. But the resemblances stop there.

While Masas aimed at cuisine authentic to the southern Mexican State of Oaxaca, Curiel, who is Mexican American, said he is not aiming to fill any particular missing Mexican food niche in Boulder. Rather, he intends to “share my story of Mexico and the way Mexicans eat and how they go out to dine.”

He sees Cozobi as a relaxed space “where you can go anytime. I don’t like pretensions. I really wanted to tell my story for people to understand my amazing culture better.”

Telling that story means Cozobi’s menu centers on corn, the grain that, after all, was first domesticated thousands of years ago in Mexico.

Fourteen of the 21 dishes planned contain corn that will be prepared on-site using the centuries-old and time-consuming process of nixtamal, in which corn is specially treated to produce the basic masa from which many Mexican dishes are prepared.

But the stories go beyond the centrality of corn. ”The way I cook has to do with stories and places that I’ve been, not regions. Everything has to do with a story,” Curiel noted.

For example, he serves sweet potatoes inspired by his childhood memories of a sweet potato-laden pushcart that passed by his Guadalajara home nightly at 7 p.m. 

Mamelas, a thin masa tortilla with various toppings and sauces, remind him how he learned to make them from a woman who had a food stand in front of a cathedral. “Every time I do it, I think of her. I wouldn’t be doing mamelas if not for her. It ties my heart to Mexico.”

Curiel hopes he can succeed, where three previous restaurants on the site in the past decade have not, by paying close attention to local diners’ preferences for natural foods.

The corn, for example, will be organic, non-GMO heirloom cobs flown in from Mexico.

Additionally, Cozobi will cater to Boulderites who have food allergies. He plans a gluten-free kitchen and said he can handle 26 different allergens “to create a dish that is ‘wow’, either way.”

Curiel noted Masas was in good shape physically when he acquired the lease, “but of course we had to do our own vision,” one that relied more on natural elements like clay, wood and terracotta.

The result “will definitely feel different, more earthy, a lot more cozy, relatable and warmer,” remarked Agatha Jane Strompolos, owner of the Denver firm of Agatha Jane Interior Design, who led the redesign.

Cozobi, she said, is keeping Masas’ open kitchen through which customers can watch cooking, many of its tables and chairs, the concrete floors and the lighting fixtures above the bar.

Perhaps the biggest visual change is Masas’ white drywalls, which have been transformed with a rough-mudded and troweled rustic look, in blended lighter and darker green paint. Curiel, said Strompolos, didn’t want the “super-typical bright colors” that are popular in many Mexican restaurants but are less authentic. 

The atmosphere overall, Strompolos said, is “more like you have in Mexico, a place with more history to it.”

Curiel hopes his deep experience in the restaurant industry around the United States and Mexico, as well as in Boulder, where he worked at downtown’s Centro Mexican Kitchen, can propel him to sustained popularity.

He seems prepared for Boulder’s fickle customers. Success, he said, is “one plate, one guest at a time. If our product, our people and the community love it, we will be successful, but you can never stop improving.”