Vato Launches “Cooking With Homies” With Hellbender Collaboration
The recently opened Northern Mexican bakery debuts its guest-chef series with a chorizo burrito, chamoy donut, and passionfruit cold brew spritz.
Vato, the Northern Mexican bakery from Michelin-starred Corima’s chef and owner Fidel Caballero, Sofía Ostos, Paco Alonso, and Erica Alonso, brings the borderland flavors of Ciudad Juárez and El Paso to Park Slope. Its new series, Cooking With Homies, debuted today in collaboration with Yara Herrera of Hellbender, a Mexican-American restaurant in Ridgewood, Queens.
The bakery, currently open from 7 AM–3 PM and planning to expand with a dinner offering, describes itself as “ni de aquí, ni de allá,” neither from here nor there. Cooking With Homies puts that idea into practice, pairing Vato’s voice with that of a guest chef whose cooking similarly moves between Mexico and the United States.
A line had already formed down the block when I arrived to try the choripapa burrito — Vato’s flour tortilla, a Northern Mexican staple, wrapped around red pork chorizo, cheddar, and refried beans. While corn tortillas dominate in central and southern regions, the flour tortilla reflects the borderlands of Northern Mexico. Cheddar nods to Tex-Mex tradition. The result is neither strictly Mexican nor American, but grounded in both.
It was impossible to ignore the chamoy donut — sweet, sour, salty, and spicy at once. Chamoy is a staple flavor of Mexican snack culture and at Hellbender, where “tables are graced with bright red plates of chamoy-coated fruit,” according to Time Out New York. The flavor lands in Vato’s bakery format: a donut glazed with blood orange chamoy jam.
The passionfruit cold brew spritz follows the same logic. Hellbender’s beverage program, known for elevated margaritas by Rolo’s alum Tony Millici, shifts into cafe mode: cold brew with a restrained hit of passionfruit, bright but coffee-driven.
The Cooking With Homies series is one to watch. In a city crowded with collaborations, it’s rare to come across one that feels so deliberate. Rather than merging for spectacle, the simple menu shows how two kitchens with shared roots can meet in the middle — neither here nor there, but, as Vato says, “just in-between.”
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ahh yes this explains the wild line this morning