A Craving for Chamoy
Rim dips and spicy sweets: Pastry Chef Gabriella Martinez brings one of Mexico’s favorite treats to Portland at Sweet Creature.
Pastry Chef Gabriella Martinez of Sweet Creature | Photos: Will Blunt
After relocating from Burbank to Portland, Pastry Chef Gabriella Martinez had a serious hankering for chamoy. The tart, sticky, and spicy Mexican condiment made from salted fruit seasoned with lime and chile had become a pantry staple.
“Where I grew up, a block away there was a little bodega that had a whole wall of Mexican candy: chile watermelon lollipops, mango pops, tamarind spoons, and chamoy candy. I’d go every day with my friends.” Martinez began to crave the addictingly mouth-puckering treat, and upon discovering that it wasn’t being produced locally, decided to make her own.
Since moving to Portland, Martinez had been working various pastry jobs and doing some consulting around town, and had begun to dig deeper into Mexican ingredients. “I was able to play with things, and learn more about myself. Around that time I had learned from a DNA test that I was significantly indigenous Mexican.” From there, Martinez transitioned to a residency at Dame under the name Sweet Creature, and began doing pop-ups with Chef Luna Contreras of Chelo. Through the development of her own concept, Martinez found the time and freedom to play with her chamoy recipe and introduce it to local restaurants. She began to develop her recipe through a combination of research and memory. “I literally made it for fun, and four days later it was in five restaurants. I didn’t know what was happening.”
Martinez had been selling bonbons in farmers markets around town and started getting her feet wet with pop-ups that really kicked Sweet Creature into high gear. “I started out selling in quarts, and went from five to 15 to 20 restaurants. They weren’t small spots; all these places and chefs are people I look up to. I make really decent money doing that. If restaurants want me to make certain flavors for them, I will.”
Apple Cake, Bone Marrow Caramel, Mexicana Crema Ice Cream, Mezcal-Lime Apples, House Chamoy
Most commonly seen as a sauce, chamoy relies on dried or pickled fruit stewed with sugar, citrus juice, and some form of spicy chile. Said to be an evolution of Chinese see mui, or salted and preserved stone fruit, chamoy is dynamic—salty, sour, sweet, and spicy—and is an easily varied template. It can be a sauce or a solid, used for everything from topping fresh fruit, to coating candy and dressing up beverages.
“The biggest thing for me is flavor and consistency,” says Martinez. “I do an insane amount of flavors. Mango is the number one, and it really has to have that mango flavor.” In addition to incorporating dried fruit, her tactic is to pack in as much high quality fresh fruit as possible, backed with coconut palm sugar from Malaysia. “I have a deep freezer storage. For my strawberry chamoy, I use Harry's Berries, and I work with the Good Pickle here in Portland to get brine for the pickle flavor.” For the spice, Martinez uses a blend of dried chile de árbol with Chilito Seasoning and Tajín for added citric acid.
Her line has expanded to include flavors beyond the traditional, like tamarind, to passion fruit, yuzu, and calamansi. In addition to selling to restaurants, she sells chamoy through social media, at markets, and at pop-ups. She sells in three and eight-ounce tubs, and recently added mini squeeze bottles on keychains, as well as chamoy candy. Summer is her busiest season, when chamoy rim-dipped cocktails are an easy sell, but Martinez encourages people to “put it on a fruit cocktail or candy. I’ve also had chefs use it as a marinade or to glaze duck or ribs. You can also drizzle it on ice cream.” During a late winter pop-up, Martinez whipped out her chamoy keychain to add a final flourish of spice and tang to a dish of green apple cake with bone marrow caramel and Crema Mexicana ice cream.
Martinez now has a brick-and-mortar in the works, where her chamoy will accent the shop with coffee and pastries by day and cocktails and plated desserts by night. “People really like [chamoy] here in Portland. It was very prominent back home in California, so having people embrace it up here has been really cool.”
