At the Mexican food booth at Jazz Fest, Carmo’s chef helps new talent take a big step up

Running a food booth at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival takes a tremendous amount of planning and diligence. Running a food booth and helping another vendor seize the opportunity of Jazz Fest to showcase their work takes something else.

That is the dedication and sense of community that’s been on display at the Cultural Exchange Pavilion food stand for the past few years, and again at the 2025 Jazz Fest. Behind it is also the story of a distinctive local restaurant that closed but continues in a new way.

And along the way there’s great shrimp ceviche, a deeply flavorful mole tamale and a killer frozen paloma cocktail.

Carmo, now Tempero’s

Dana Honn and Christina do Carmo Honn ran their downtown restaurant Carmo for 15 years and for the past three years they’ve run the taco stand at Jazz Fest, in Food Area 2.

Carmo closed at the end of 2024, but the same crew is back this year under the name Tempero’s Market Kitchen.

That’s the catering and events brand the Honns created, which carries on some of Carmo’s dishes and very much its ethos of transparent sourcing and local support. They also started the new Nikkei Izakaya, serving a Japanese-inspired tavern menu inside the venue the Broadside (600 N. Broad St.).

At Jazz Fest, the fish for their tacos changes frequently based on what Honn can source locally. It was black drum to begin the fest, served with an optional fiery hot sauce, based on a recipe from Christina’s native Brazil.

Introducing Ella

While managing their Jazz Fest stand, however, Dana Honn and his crew also help enable the annually changing food booth attached to the festival’s Cultural Exchange Pavilion. The programming at this pavilion changes each year with the guest country, and for 2025 that brings a celebration of Mexico.

Tempero’s is running this stand in collaboration with Ella, lending support with equipment, logistics, sourcing and management.

Ella is a new food concept under development from Yves Montero and his team, inspired by his experience growing up in New Orleans in a family from Mexico. His father Hugo Montero ran the restaurant Casa Borrega, which continues now as a vendor at the Crescent City Farmers Market.

He sees Ella as a next-generation expression of food, and his goal after Jazz Fest is to take it on the road with stops in different cities.

The Jazz Fest booth is a big step for the new concept, and working with Tempero’s is making it possible.

“It gives you a complete confidence boost, I think it’s awesome,” Montero said. “It’s great being able to work with someone as seasoned as Dana who is also open. You get to mix ideas.”

This is the third year for these collaborations. In 2023, Honn and his team worked with the pop-up FOWLMOUTH to bring its trifongo and other Puerto Rican flavors to the fest. Next, they worked with the pop-up Waska for last year’s cultural focus on Colombia.

“I just really dig working with other chefs in that capacity,” Honn said.

What to try

At the Cultural Exchange Pavilion, the food stand has a lengthy menu with six dishes, accounting for both omnivore and vegetarian versions of tamales ($10), flautas ($10) and ceviche ($12 and $11).

Best bets are the shrimp ceviche, brightened by the marinade over crunchy tostadas you can see (and smell) them frying up fresh in the booth, and the chicken tamale, with a deeply flavorful mole mixing with a sharp green salsa.

The vegetarian version of the flauta is also top notch, with a crunchy shell shattering over a soft filling of potatoes with cheese, all splashed with (an optional) hot sauce.

The booth also has the Cultural Exchange Bar serving a paloma cocktail ($13.75) with tequila, blood orange and grapefruit juices and grapefruit sparking water (frozen or on the rocks), micheladas (beer with spicy tomato juice and lime, $9.75), Sol lager ($9.75) and “a taste of mezcal” ($10), a.k.a. a shot. The paloma is both refreshing and flavorful and the frozen version hits just right on a hot day.