San Diego Magazine's Happy Half Hour

Welcome back to the Happy Half Hour! This week we’re with Emmanuel Favela and Tony Haro, founders of Hellote in Chula Vista. Hellote is a new outdoor eatery that specializes in elote, Mexican street corn, served in both traditional and nontraditional ways. Emmanuel and Tony opened Hellote last fall, and they both have backgrounds in architecture (but zero restaurant experience), yet Hellote has been a success. We chat about how they conceived of the idea and created such a fun and inviting space on Main Street. We also learned that Emmanuel once worked as a designer at Funko (which explains the adorable Hellote logo!) and that they went to Texas to get special corn roasters that can cook the ears at a scorching 800 degrees. They walked us through the menu: Aside from a standard elote (Valentina sauce, lime, Cotíja, mayonnaise, and Tajín), there are dessert tamales, arrachera baked potatoes, inventive snack boxes of roasted corn topped with black ash mayo and chicharrones, and entire ears of corn covered in Fl