× Expand Photo by Iain Shaw Malinche's Mole Ozumbeño. The mole recipe has been passed down through generations of the Gutiérrez family.

When the Gutiérrez family closed Ballwin’s Señor Pique in late 2016, after a 12-year run, they decided to take a break from the full-time business of running a restaurant. Now they’re back with Malinche, an ode to the flavors of their native Mexico City. The restaurant opened in Ellisville on March 15.

Co-owner Angel Jiménez-Gutiérrez, who's consulted for a number of Mexican restaurants since Señor Pique closed, says his family missed running their own place.

“After two years, I missed it, and my mom missed it," he says. "So we got into business with some friends of our family, the Ayalas, who were also my consulting clients. We’re very excited to bring a different approach and share a part of our Mexican culture with our dishes.”

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Where Señor Pique was a huge restaurant, seating almost 300 diners, Malinche is a cozy place. There are fewer than 10 tables and a handful of seats at the bar. Jiménez-Gutiérrez says the service experience needed to be similarly intimate to help diners navigate a menu featuring dish names and ingredients that may be unfamiliar to some. This isn’t Tex-Mex—instead, Malinche focuses on small plates inspired by the cuisine of Mexico City, drawing occasionally on other Mexican regional flavors.

“I feel a lot of respect for all the Tex-Mex restaurants,” Jiménez-Gutiérrez says. “I know what it takes to run any restaurant. But they’re going for a different market.

“We do a lot of cross-training so all our team members know the kitchen and the floor,” he adds. “The interaction between the server and the diner has to be closer. The customers are going to ask questions, so we need servers who can be here explaining everything.”

While you might not recognize some of the terminology on the menu, the food itself is familiar. Jiménez-Gutiérrez ’ mother, Maria Gutiérrez Molina, runs the kitchen, cooking recipes that span 150 years of family history. “We’re not exaggerating with that,” Jiménez-Gutiérrez says. “My mother was taught by her mother and both her grandmas. As the older sister in her family, she was cooking at the age of 14 or 15.”

× Expand Photo by Iain Shaw Malinche's Mole Ozumbeño. The recipe for the mole has been passed down through the family.

The Mole Ozumbeño (pictured above), features pulled chicken wrapped enchilada-style in a corn tortilla and covered in a mole made from chocolate, cinnamon, and five types of pepper, among other ingredients. Maria inherited the mole recipe from her mother, who lived in Ozumba, a small town an hour outside Mexico City. “If you go there today, you won’t be surprised to still see donkeys and horses on the streets,” says Jiménez-Gutiérrez . The dish is topped with home-made queso fresco, sour cream, and fresh red onions that cut through the mole’s combined heat and sweetness. It's served with a side of rice.

The tamalito frito is a fried tamale made with longaniza, a Mexican sausage similar to chorizo, green salsa and queso fresco. The dish is inspired partly by the snacks that Jiménez-Gutiérrez and his brother would grab from street stalls near Mexico City’s Candelaria subway station on the way to visit their grandma in Ozumba. “We used to go on the subway to take the last bus, and we would stop at Candelaria de los Patos,” Jiménez-Gutiérrez recalls. “With the longaniza, we’re trying to bring you back to a place called Tres Marias, where we used to stop on our way to Acapulco for vacations.”

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Other dishes feature fun references to Mexican food culture. The Sopita Enmaizada, for instance, is a soup made with ground corn, chile piquin, queso fresco, and fresh lime. The flavors are reminiscent of Mexican street corn, but Jiménez-Gutiérrez says the flakes of popcorn that garnish the soup are a nod to Mexican cinemas, where moviegoers can douse their popcorn with lime juice and hot sauce.

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Del Trompo is named after the vertical spit that street taco vendors use to roast al pastor pork. It’s a twist on the iconic taco, achiote pork piled on a homemade corn-cilantro tortilla with a variety of peppers, pineapple, onion, and cilantro. An oil infused with smoky ancho peppers is lightly drizzled on top, and on the side, there’s a wedge of lime, a green salsa, and a red salsa with a hint of pineapple.

Another interesting difference: instead of the ubiquitous chips and salsa, the kitchen sends out a Mexican amuse of sorts, a different item every week, such as a flauta with green salsa and sour cream (pictured below).

Photo by Iain Shaw

The drink list includes several Mexican beers and tequila- and rum-based cocktails. Try the strong, smoky Juntos y Revueltos, which includes tequila, mezcal, dry curacao, saffron, agave, and lime.

The full dinner menu, available from 5 p.m.–9.30 p.m., features the highlights of the Gutiérrez family cookbook. Most dishes are $8–$9, and you’ll probably want to order at least three dishes between two diners. After 9:30 p.m., the menu switches to a limited late-night selection of tacos, tostadas, and quesadillas, all of which are $3–$4.