esmero
/ez-MEH-ro/ craft with care and intention
The name esmero embodies our purpose. It speaks to care, intention, and uncompromising attention to detail. Every gesture—whether sourcing an ingredient or a dish’s presentation—is guided by the pursuit of excellence and genuine hospitality.
Our ambition is not to redefine Mexican cuisine, but to contribute to its continuing story. To honor its past while embracing its future.
Led by Chef Adair Canacasco, esmero is the culmination of a lifelong exploration of Mexican identity, memory, and craftsmanship. Born in Mexico City and raised in the American Midwest, Chef Adair brings together heritage and contemporary technique through a collaborative creative process rooted in curiosity, discipline, and intention. Each course is thoughtfully composed to engage every sense, transforming familiar flavors into experiences that evoke emotion, inspire conversation, and create lasting memories.
Every ingredient is chosen with purpose, every technique refined through discipline, and every detail executed with meticulous care. We honor the traditions that shape Mexican cuisine while pushing toward new possibilities — creating experiences that are deeply rooted, boldly contemporary, and crafted with intention.
esmero is our practice.
Chef Adair Canacasco
executive chef
Chef Canacasco has spent the past nine years within The Alinea Group, helping shape some of its most distinctive restaurants. Starting at Alinea in 2017, he has since led the kitchens at Roister, FIRE, and the group's Big Sky, Montana, residency.
This residency is a chance for Chef Adair to lead something deeply personal, a concept shaped by his Mexican heritage, his family's roots in Mexico City, Hidalgo, and Guerrero, and his life and career in Chicago.
His earliest food memories are tied to family, land, and ritual. Those memories are the foundation of the cooking here, a cuisine that honors the ingredients, techniques, and traditions of Mexico and carries them forward through his own perspective and years at The Alinea Group.
Rather than reinterpret heritage from a distance, the cooking grows from inside it, exploring how memory, craft, and contemporary thinking can share one table. The result is rooted in tradition and open to where it might go, faithful to its origins yet curious about how to challenge them.