Deza

The Verdict

Auckland fell hard and fast for Sagrado Cantina. After a stint at markets across the city in 2024, they quickly garnered enough of a following to warrant a bricks and mortar space in St Kevins Arcade. It’s not surprising the city took to Jorge and Andrea’s cooking so quickly; it is a true representation of how they liked to eat in their native Mexico City. 

Their new location felt like an extension of the market stall in many ways; now they had a static kitchen, a small bar space, and a handful of outside tables for people to sit with their tacos. But the focus was still on fast moving, casual eats—for people to order their tacos, eat them with a margarita, and move on. There wasn’t the space for people to settle in for the evening, something Jorge and Andrea wanted to change. So, when the space next door to them opened up, they jumped at the chance, and Deza was born. 

What, exactly, is the difference between Deza and Sagrado? It’s a good question—one many have been asking. The idea, Jorge tells me, is to provide a space for people to extend their evenings out. It also gives the two of them the chance to flex a few more muscles in the kitchen which, for Aucklanders, has meant we finally have genuine hand pressed tortillas in the city. It also means you can now dine at Sagrado on dishes like stuffed ancho with a spiced, deeply flavourful mole, smoky cantina beans with bacon and chorizo, and slow cooked pork with rice, tomatillo and tomato sauce. 

“Sagrado Cantina was really an evolution from the market. It was about bringing that street style of Mexican cuisine,” Jorge explains. “But then we saw customers really wanting to spend more time on the tables, they wanted to have more drinks and they were curious about different Mexican dishes, they’d ask us what else we had on the menu.” They began experimenting with a few dishes, a few more drinks, and then, when the space opened up, the timing felt serendipitous. 

Both spaces operate as Sagrado Cantina during the day, serving their classic tacos, tortas, and volcanos; the street food that brought the concept to life. In the evening, though, Deza becomes its own space, with dishes that Jorge and Andrea like to eat at restaurants in Mexico, building out into a fuller meal of entrees, mains and desserts. The idea is that you go to Sagrado Cantina for a quick bite, and you come to Deza to linger. Crucially, though, this shift in focus on the food, and the opening of a space with a slower turnaround, allowed them the time to finally put hand pressed tortillas on the menu. 

Using fresh Aotearoa-made mesa from corn grown in Napier, they roll them out, press them in tortilla presses brought back from Mexico, cook them on the grill, and then load them up with cheese and either flash fried picanha steak, or slow cooked lamb birria with a side of consomé. So go, order a mezcalina, a margarita, or sip on a tequila or mezcal from one of Auckland’s largest selections, and stay a while.