Meet the women who have
leveled the culinary playing field in SMA.
In
the past decade, cooking has become a glamorous profession but being a chef is both physically and mentally challenging; a career for
which few people, including women, are cut out for. These women are the
exception.
When I first made the inquiry two
months ago, I was told there were just a handful of female chefs in SMA but as
I continued to ask, more and more women stepped forward; beautiful, passionate,
strong, confident, educated, articulate, doubly committed, and accomplished
women. They are all amazing. With a few exceptions, most of the women on this
list have never been in the spotlight until now.
Some of the best
chefs in the world got practical rather than formal training. Twenty-two of the thirty-four women on this list were
formally trained in culinary schools and internships in Mexico and around the
world. Although you don’t need a degree to become a chef, it
does hasten the process. The
women who became chefs without formal education worked hard under talented chefs and say that training was the best
education for them.
For years, women have done remarkable
things in the Mexican kitchen. What makes these women special is that they all have an incredible drive and supportive
mentors who recognized their talents and encourage them pursue their gift. As a
result, they are all successful, empowering the
next generation of women to follow in their footsteps.
There is strength in numbers and this new culinary force is
out to prove just one thing: when you’re this good, everything else that happens
in the kitchen is pretty much insignificant.
Buen Apetito!
Alexandra Gutt
Chef
La Parada
Alexandra Gutt is the chef
at La Parada, a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu in Lima, Peru and is responsible for
heightening the profile of mouth-watering, Peruvian flavors in San Miguel.
She completed her
training at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Naples and the Cayman Islands. She moved
to SMA and opened La Parada with her husband Juan Leon. La Parada has consistently
been in the top ten on Trip Advisor since it
opened.
She recently took a
trip to Valle de Guadalupe to learn more about Mexican wines and was fascinated
that the wineries are making such remarkable blends. She relishes the authenticity
but is not a big fan of eating insects. “Just the thought of having a
grasshopper leg stuck in-between my teeth makes me crazy.” She does eat popcorn
by the ton; she’s addicted to it.
Many of the women on
this list picked La Parada as one of the best places to eat in SMA. When Ale was
young, she hated seafood. Seafood is now her favorite thing to cook and eat. Plenty
of people in SMA love Ale’s seafood, too; the ceviches at La Parada are
legendary.
Ana Cecilia Alvarez
Sous-Chef
MiVida
When sous-chef Ana
Cecilia Alvarez graduated from La Universidad Tecnologíca in San Miguel de
Allende, she did her internship at Restaurant Il Grecale in Novello, Italy. She
also took baking classes from Chef Christophe Rhedon in Mexico City, courses in
contemporary Mexican cuisine and Mexipan’s artisan ice cream making by Italian
master Angelo Corvitto. She was Chef-in-Charge at Casa de Path in Los Senderos
and later took her current position as sous-chef and bakery-in-charge at Mi
Vida Restaurant.
She says she’s always
believed that motivation is the key to success, so every day she wakes up with
the best attitude, certain she is doing what she likes the most. She admits
that occupationally, she’s not very flexible; “I like things to go perfect” she
says. Perfect it is when it comes to her specialty; fish (she smokes the Robalo
herself), cream of beet, fried chard, chicharron and avocado. I ordered it last
week and there’s only two words to describe it: world-class.
Brenda Rocio Segura Trejo
Sous-Chef
Zumo Restaurant
Chef Brenda
Rocio Segura Trejo’s passion for the kitchen started early. When her father
died, her mother returned to work and Brenda was left to cook for her two
brothers. She says, to this day, that cooking brings great joy to her life when
she thinks about the early days.
What put her in culinary school? When she was just 12
years old, she was fanatical about Mexican football and dreamed about being the
official cook of the Mexican national team.
Brenda
graduated from CUIM - Centro Universitario Internacional de México - in Celaya and
did her internship at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Acapulco. She
frequently returns to her hometown, Caleras
of Amexhe, Gto. (Population about 1800) where her grandmother lives. Her
grandmother is the person who taught Brenda how to cook and still inspires her
culinary endeavors today.
Brenda
loves wine and would like to be a sommelier one
day. She’s a quick study as the sous-chef at Zumo, a SMA fine-dining restaurant
that’s famous for their food and wine pairings.
Carolina López Juárez
Sous-Chef
Buenos Aires Bistro
Chef Carolina López
Juárez is the product of great mentoring. When she was young, she was inspired
by the cooking of her mother and grandmother and learned to make pastas. With
Chef Mariano Alverez at Buenos Aires Bistro, she’s been taught the fine art of
stuffed pasta, sauces and grilled Argentinean foods. She never says no to an
opportunity and when she started with Mariano, she was his right hand. Through
Mariano's support, she gradually gained the confidence and he eventually made
her sous-chef. It’s a title that she earned every step of the way.
Alverez speaks of
Carolina with great affection. “Did you know that she has never called in
sick in 5 years and has been late only a handful of times because of
her bus from Comonfort.” “Now that’s a commitment,” he says.
Carolina likes to cook
traditional Mexican cuisine and wants to travel to Bangkok and learn more about
Thai food. She finds the flavors of Thailand irresistible, where harmony is the guiding principle behind each dish, hitting
that certain sweet spot to balance all the flavors.
Christian Guzmán
Chef, New Projects and Event Creation
Mansión Virreyes
Chef Christian Guzman’s
father has dedicated his life to agronomy and the fields so she’s tried some of
the most ordinary and exotic fruits and vegetables in Mexico.
Christian graduated
from Mausi Sebess in Buenos Aires, Argentina where she developed four specialties:
cakes, breads, desserts and chocolates. She was trained at an industrial
kitchen, a kind of kitchen boot camp, where they served 1500 meals a day with a
staff of four people. She did banquet work for awhile and was hired by Bob
Thieman at Hank's New Orleans Cafe and Oyster Bar. She is now at Mansion
Virreyes, a hotel in Centro, where she is the chef in charge of new projects
and event creation.
She’s a natural when
it comes to planning large parties and has an unconscious love affair with everything
related to communication: hosting a cooking program on Televisa in Piedras
Negras; working as a photographer for Periodico Zócalo Magazine; doing DJ
stints on local radio programs and has even done singing competitions.
Chef Christian Guzmán is
opening a new restaurant in Centro before the end of the year. Stay tuned for
an update.
Claudia Martin del Campo
Pastry Chef
Claudia’s Bakery
Claudia first started
making pies with her German born great-uncle Jimmy when she was just 7 years
old, spending all of her summers in his Los Angeles kitchen.
Claudia developed a
love of baking early on just like Dulce, her assistant Caro's daughter, who is nine
years old. Claudia has mentored her for over four years since she first started
the bakery when her husband retired.
She's won over a large
base of steady customers including Juan’s Café, her first customer, sells at La
Pulga every month and is tied in to a number of major wedding planners in town.
Weddings are big business for Claudia.
Her kitchen
confidential: she makes everything fresh with no preservatives. In her next
life, she would like to go to Italy, a country where the regional and cultural
diversity of its’ twenty regions give her plenty to master in the way of making
tarts and pies. For now, the people of SMA are partial to her sweet and savory
pies, especially the lemon meringue.
Daniela Estrada Lagunas
Chef
L’otel and Mac and Soup
A graduate of Universidad del
Claustro de Sor Juana in Mexico City, Daniela is passionate about La Cocina
Dulce. She was hired as the chef at L ÔTEL and MAC and SÔUP in Doce-18.
When LÔTEL opens later this summer, she will also do breakfasts for the guests
who stay at this stylish, new hotel.
Daniella is trained in Capoeira, the
Brazilian martial art that combines elements of dance, acrobatics and music;
plays the Brazilian Birimbao, a percussion string instrument; has studied
Portuguese and was part of a Roller Derby team in Mexico City before moving to
SMA.
Her favorite place to go in SMA is
XV on Cuna de Allende where the Paroquia views are second to none. When she’s
home, she’s making her specialty dishes: mole rosa and Panuchos, a dish from
the Yucatan. If it were the last weekend on earth, she would be in Sydney,
Australia where she would eventually like to go to learn more about the food.
In fact, she wants to do a lot of traveling to further develop her personal style
in the kitchen. She loves the taste of vanilla; her favorite book is Like Water for Chocolate. Her mother and
grandmother taught her to always cook with love; the main ingredient that’s
mixed into every bowl of her Mac and Cheese.
Dina Butterfield
Sous-Chef, Uchi Restaurant
Dallas, Texas
(formerly of Dos Casas, SMA)
Chef Dina Butterfield
graduated from the Instituto Gastrónomico Corbuse in Queretaro and describes
herself as passionate, loyal and determined.
Dina traveled to
Brussels to work as an Aupair, lived in San Francisco and worked at Eccolo, a
restaurant where she was trained in charcuterie and developed her passion for
Japanese cuisine. She also worked at Ame, an Asian-inspired, Michelin
one-star restaurant in the
Mission district of San Francisco. In 2010, she returned to San Miguel de
Allende and worked as a chef at Dos Casas. She moved to Dallas and worked as a
sous-chef at Rosewood’s Mansion on Turtle Creek and then moved to her current
position at Uchi, a restaurant serving modern Japanese cuisine.
Dina’s biggest mentor,
Chef Greg Dunmore, always told her to believe in herself and to go for she
wants. To this day, she still calls or texts him for advice.
Tokyo is on her travel
radar next. True to her Mexican heritage, she loves making chilaquiles. She currently
resides in Dallas and regularly comes back to SMA to cook for friends and
family.
Photo by Dan Padgett.
NOTE: Back
in 2010, when SMA’s culinary boom was in its early development, Dina was one of
the few female chefs in SMA. We salute Dina for paving the way and inspiring
others to embrace their dream of becoming a chef.
Elisa Córdova and Jimena Tamayo
Chef/Owners
Garambullo Fonda Gourmet
This mother/daughter
team is inseparable and that’s why we left Chef Elisa Cordova, one of the
original female chefs in SMA, on this list instead of with the Maestras, who
will be featured next month.
Elisa started out as a
baker and ended up as a pastry chef in her father’s restaurant in Acapulco,
where she made desserts for other caterers. She came to San Miguel because she
was in love with who is now her husband. For her initial years in town, she worked
at Cumpanio and finally opened Garambullo Fonda Gourmet, a family owned restaurant
with her daughter Jimena. Elisa says of cooking that it was always the family’s
favorite things to do; a time where they share so many moments of love.
Different as night and
day, Elisa loves cooking seafood while Jimena loves to bake. For their specialties,
Elisa makes Octopus from her grandmother’s recipe and Jimena bakes cookies and
desserts. If it were the last weekend on earth, Elisa would be eating in a
Greek port and Jimena would be in India, where she's had some of the best food
she's ever eaten.
Jimena Tamayo is a
makeup artist by training. She said that if you buy one thing for your kitchen,
it has to be a PINK Kitchen Aid. Rosa Mexicana is the family color. Garambullo
Fonda Gourmet is dominated by this stunning pink wall where we captured the two
of them sharing coffee and a spirited morning laugh.
Gabriela Green Pizarro
Chef/Owner
Aguamiel cocina rústica
Chef Gaby Green is on
top of her game at Aguamiel cocina rustica, her fifth restaurant and some say
her best venture yet. We couldn’t agree more.
Gaby was born and
raised in Mexico City by Mexican and European grandparents. Both of her
grandmothers were great cooks from different cultures but with an excellent
sense of food. In fact, everyone in Gaby’s family cooks and they love to gather
regularly to enjoy different types of cuisines. Gaby’s favorites are Mexican,
Asian and Arab.
Gaby had a successful
career in film before she started cooking. During that time, she did a lot of
international travel which included eating in some of the world’s best
restaurants. Twenty years ago, she found herself under the spell of San Miguel
and wanted to stay. Still in film, she brought the first art film festival to
San Miguel. Cooking was always her other passion and she ultimately decided to
change her path for something more personal that she could share with people.
Her specialties are a Mexican Mole Soup with Wild Mushrooms and Pork that is
seasoned with Chile Guajillo and Ancho. It’s her Grandmother’s recipe. She’s
also famous for her flan.
Last fall, with her
partner Jennifer Posner, she traveled to Myanmar and Thailand, taking cooking
classes, chef-to- chef, and fine tuning the Asian recipes Gaby already had in
her library. Gaby has that instinctive feel for what pairs well together and understands
how to balance flavors. They recently traveled to Cuba, incorporating Cuban
dishes into aguamiel’s menu when they returned.
We can’t wait to taste where Gaby’s
going next.
Gabriela Hernandez Aguilar
Sous-Chef
The Restaurant
Chef Gabriela
Hernández first studied psychology before she decided on a career in
gastronomy. She’s a graduate of the Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana in
Mexico City and worked at the Rain Forest Café and at Italianni's during school.
She did her internship under Monica Patiño (MP Café Bistro), at oriental
restaurant O'mei and at the Hotel Nikko Reforma. She returned to work for
Monica Patiño at Restaurante
Naos and later at Delirio.
Like many of us, Gabriela
moved to SMA for a slower pace of life. She first worked at Dos Casas as
manager of their wine bar. A few years later, she joined Donnie Masterton at
The Restaurant, where she has been a sous-chef for the past 7 years.
“At all costs” she
says she’s content to stay in San Miguel with her five year old daughter, three
small dogs and two Japanese fish. Her specialty dish is pork cheek and newly
discovered ingredient is lemon zest. She says of her boss, Donnie Masterton,
that he’s always presenting new challenges but gives her unlimited support and
encouragement to accomplish them.
Is there another
restaurant in her future? She certainly has her pick with all of Masterton’s
recent openings and rumor has it there’s another new one in the works. Stay
tuned.
Greta Ortega Casañas
Executive Chef
MiVida
Chef Greta Ortega
Casanas was a championship swimmer and spent most of her adolescent life in the
pool. She participated in State and Nationals and was selected for the Central
and Pan American Games and the Central American University Championships. She
was the regional champion in 1998 and also participated in the National Triathlon
in 2000.
She studied at Le
Cordon Bleu in Mexico City, where she received a diploma in cuisine and pastry.
She participated in the Atelier Boulangerie workshops, received a Master’s degree
in Nutrition from the Latin Ameican University, Santa Fe campus and did her
undergraduate at Metropolitan Autonomous University, Xochimilco.
She loves bread; she
worked at The House of Bread in Cuernavaca where she came in every morning
at 6:00 AM just to help the bakers. She did her internships at Bistrot The
Bourgongne in Mexico City, The Glass Bar and at the Hotel Hyde Away in Playa
del Carmen.
She opened MiVida in
2006 and was the first chef to plant a garden and grow vegetables and herbs for
the restaurant. This September she will travel to Albany Novella, Italy and
study under Chef Alessandro Neri, a chef she met while working in Playa del
Carmen.
We salute Chef Ortega
for being one of the first female chefs to take the helm of a major, fine
dining restaurant in SMA.
Ivonne Zapata Molina Agacio
Chef
San Mike
Chef Ivonne Zapata
Molina Agacio graduated from Le Cordon Bleu in Mexico City and attended the
Instituto Gastronómico Letty Gordon and Escuela Gastronomica Dulce María
Escobar. She taught at Escuela Gastronomica Dulce María Escobar, giving cooking
lessons to children attending summer camp there.
After a partnership in
a Starbucks store, she worked as a teacher in Hermosillo at ICATEC culinary school
and at Mundo Chef. She took on the role of personality at Azul Marino Radio,
talking about seafood and recipes and also wrote about cooking for a small
magazine, Familia. She moved back to Mexico City and after a month and a half,
was offered the position at San Mike’s in Doce-18.
A friend of her
father’s, who was a chef, influenced her cooking. Get a dose of her vivacious
personality and you’ll realize that she’s the bon vivant her father always said
she was.
Karla Becerra Martinez
Chef
Lavanda Café
Chef Karla Becerra Martinez is the
product of her mother’s cooking. With no formal training, she’s turned Lavanda
Café into one of SMA’s most popular restaurants.
Karla says she
remembers herself as a chubby, little girl, always arguing for her right to
have a proper and delicious meal and taking everyone’s leftovers.
Karla is a graphic designer by
training but transitioned to cooking when she decided that design work was not
for her. She has incorporated many of her mother’s dishes on to Lavanda’s menu.
Her design training is obvious every time she plates a dish.
She’s
always loved food more than anything, she says, but don’t get her started
about Bel canto, opera or classical music until
after you get your breakfast. In her next life, she’s coming back as Ángela Peralta.
Laura Buccheri
Chef/Owner
La Cucina di Afrodita
Chef Laura Buccheri is
one the most accomplished Italian chefs in SMA. A purist, Laura and her husband
Justin make over twelve types of cheese, all of their own bread and their
illustrious Limoncello.
She grew up in
Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto, in Messina province, and like any large Italian
family, food was a key part of their life. She was an actress for 10 years, and
then got her professional cooking start in one of the finest restaurants on
Lake Como, Trattoria da Angela, where she began learning about Italian cuisine
from French-trained chef, Adriana Zedda. Laura spent hours watching Adriana
cook. Like Adriana, Laura has a talent for desserts; her panna cotta and lemon
custard desserts come directly from Adriana's little book of culinary secrets.
She went on to work at
AGO, Robert de Niro’s restaurant in Miami and later took a job cooking on
private yachts. She eventually became the personal chef for a Russian tycoon
where she was accustomed to cooking dinners for 75+ on a two hour notice for
many well-known guests including Vladimir Putin. She cooked in South Africa and
went on to work for another AGO property in Los Angeles, then traveled to
Greece to help her uncle out in his own restaurant. She also worked at the Raya
Hotel on the Island of Panarea in Italy and as the restaurant and hotel manager
at Villa las Estrellas in Tulum before coming to San Miguel.
Laura and Justin own a
Bed and Breakfast in Siracusa, Italy. They lead culinary tours in Sicily and
also teach Italian cooking classes. Laura is currently building a beautiful, new
restaurant, Trattoria da Laura a Los Mezquites, located just 10 minutes from
downtown SMA and is also opening La Spaghetteria in Mercado Sano. Stay tuned
for opening dates.
Laura Carolina Burgos Díaz
Chef/Owner
La Crêpe du Chef Crepería
It was love at first
bite for Chef Laura Carolina Burgos Díaz. When Carolina was living in France,
she and her husband visited Brittany where she ate her first galette, a savory
crepe made from buckwheat flour, and knew immediately that she wanted to focus
on crepes. Being surrounded by the French gastronomique culture was a true influence
and experience for her.
Carolina obtained her
CAP Boulanger (baker diploma) at Lycée Chardin des Métiers de la Restauration
et de l'hôtellerie in Gerardmer, France. Later, she obtained her formation in
crepes bretones through GRETA Bretagne Sud in the city of Vannes, France. Her
training was at Au Fournil de Fred, a small but very traditional bakery
situated in the region of Les Vosges; a one-of -a-kind place where all of the
bread is handmade. There she learned a different technique of fermentation.
She attended ITESM in
Aguascalientes and in 2006 received a BA in Marketing. She came to San Miguel
to open La Crepe de Chef with her husband Max, her major inspiration. In
addition to crepes, they also make their own bread and pizza dough.
She wants to travel to
Japan to eat a ‘real’ ramen. “Fortunately in SMA, we have a many restaurant
options”, she says. “I like to go where they offer a specialty like La Crepe de
Chef… or wherever my stomach dictates."
She loves Côte Rôtie,
the wine of the valley of Rhône, France. She says for her, it’s the most
special red in France.
Linnea Rufo
Private Chef
Chef Linnea Rufo
worked in Wheatleigh, MA as a pastry chef, then went on to gain her know-how as
Chef/Owner at Galleria Cafe and Catering, the Inn at Brookside, MA as an
Innkeeper, Owner and Special Events Planner, was a Special Events Consultant in
NYC, worked as a manager at The Mercer Kitchen in NYC and ultimately was the
Innkeeper, Owner, Special Events Planner and Executive Chef at The Bee and
Thistle Inn in Old Lyme, CT.
She has expertise in a
wide-range of cuisines and has collaborated with chefs like Jacques Pepin and
Dorie Greenspan. Her more than 30 years of comings and goings have been
featured in the New York Times, National Geographic, the Huffington Post and
Zagat.
She credits her
grandmother with influencing her cooking. She bought a wood fire pizza oven
recently and is expanding her kitchen so she can teach cooking classes and hold
private dinner parties. She recently returned from Italy where she says the
highlight of her trip was making pizza in a vineyard in Tuscany.
Luvia Esmeralada de la Rosa
Chef, Estación del Maíz
Jacinto 1930
Chef Luvia Esmeralada
de la Rosa studied at the Instituto Universitario de Oaxaca and loves the aroma
of freshly ground corn. She says that Chef Matteo Salas is her top chef now and
she’s a huge fan. She loves making noodle soups and can’t live without being an
accomplice to Chef Marene’s (Jacinto’s pastry chef) hyacinth desserts. If it
was the last weekend on earth, she would be in Oaxaca eating tacos and barbecue
with her family and daughter.
Like a true Oaxacan,
instead of recommending a wine, she selected Mezcal. If you can only buy five things
for your kitchen, she recommends a good knife, a nice table, a molcajete, a
griddle and a special spoon. She loves making mole broths and her new, favorite
new ingredient is Xoconoxtle, a sour and tart
fruit that makes delicious salsas and refreshing margaritas.
“I’ll be at Jacinto
1930 for a long time because I have so much to learn” she says. “The restaurant
is my home now.”
Magda Elisa Pablos
Head Chef
El Vergel Bistro and Market
The French are
renowned for their intimate relationship with food and wine and Chef Magda
Elsia Pablos is no exception. She is head chef at SMA’s newest French restaurant,
El Vergel Bistro and Market.
She studied fine arts
and worked as a model, later studying drama and working on various movies like
Dune, Falcon, Connan and other productions that were filmed in México City. She
also worked on Rolling Stones videos, moved to London to study at the Saint
Martin’s School of the arts and then went to France to study gastronomy. She
eventually attended The Epicurean School of Culinary Arts in Los Angeles to
refine her love of other cultures and her distinct approach to cooking. True to
her love of healthy food, she also studied organic and bio-dynamic agriculture.
She learned all of the
basics from her mother and grandmother and says no dish is complete until you
add large handfuls of love. We can taste it in every dish she creates.
Magda is one of the featured
chefs at the SMA Food Festival this year.
Marcela Bolaño
Executive Chef
Mb Catering by Design
Chef Marcela Bolaño started cooking when she was four, growing up in a home
where the most important place in the house was the kitchen; its where all the
magic happened.
Her first job was with
renowned chef Pablo San Roman. She then traveled to Hydra, Greece where she
studied and learned to master Greek cooking. She returned to Mexico City and started
her own catering business, serving celebrities like Madonna, Jennifer Aniston,
Sharon Stone and Filippa Giordano. Later, she accepted a position as executive chef at Como
Aristóteles en Polanco.
Marcela will be opening
her own restaurant, MARSALA cocina con acentos, at Hernandez Macias 48, later this year.
Marene Flores Silva
Pastry Chef
Jacinto 1930
Chef Marene Flores
Silva was a high performance swimmer in high school. Her love of cooking appeared
when she went to India as a volunteer with the Sisters of Charity of Mother
Teresa and discovered Indian cooking.
She graduated from Le
Cordon Bleu in Queretaro with a Bachelor in Gastronomy. She says all cooks know
that school means nothing without the practical experience so she completed her
internship at Dani Garcia restaurant in Marbella, Spain. She came to San Miguel
to work at Cumpanio and was relocated to Jacinto 1930 when it opened earlier
this year. She says of Chef Matteo Salas
that she needs to learn everything she can from him; he knows so much.
Food is in her DNA;
her family makes cheese and her sister teaches cheese making classes.
(quesosdelrebano on Instagram). Never a picky eater, Marene eats
everything. Long cooking times of more than twelve hours are her favorite because
it marries the flavors. She also loves raw meat, ceviches, and aguachiles;
shrimp aguachile being a specialty. She would love to go to NYC and back to
Spain but says “Jacinto 1930 is a project so I’m going to postpone traveling
for awhile.”
She usually makes
haute cuisine which fascinates her because there are so many preparations. She
says the food that is best is her mother’s comfort food; the food that speaks
to her soul.
Mari Carmen López Aguilar
Chef
Belmond Casa de Sierra Nevada Hotel
I first met Chef Mari Carmen López Aguilar when she was
a student at Technological University of San Miguel de Allende at the first
Sabores San Miguel back in June of 2013. Upon graduation, she did her
internship at restaurant Mercatbar by Quique Dacosta in Valencia Spain under
Chef Alejandro Secada Bolados. In 2014 she worked at Patio 3 Restaurant next to
the Angela Peralta Theater. She’s currently at Belmond Casa de Sierra Nevada
Hotel with Chef Juan Antonio Juarez Arzola.
She says she is devoted to the people who played a part
in her career and have given her both immense knowledge and unforgettable
experiences. It’s made her exceptionally dedicated to her work.
Her primary passion is sauces; chilies, spices and herbs
make an explosion of flavors on your palate. She’s also enthusiastic about dry
cooking methods including
grilling, pan-frying, broiling, and baking in the oven.
She comes from a large family, thirteen in all. As
number eleven, she didn’t have the opportunity to enjoy her grandparents but
she still considers them contributors to her career.
Her mother was surprised she studied gastronomy but now
they share ideas. Her mother is her favorite cook.
Maria Guadalupe Ramirez Soria (Lupita)
Chef
Café Oso Azul
How does much of SMA
begin their day; with a trip to Café Oso Azul for coffee and Huevos Mexicanas made by Chef Maria Guadalupe Ramirez Soria.
This little blue-washed
café has been # 1 on Trip
Advisor so many months I quit counting. Maria Guadalupe Ramirez Soria (Lupita)
will tell you it’s because they serve a great breakfast; many people also say that
her food is not only fresh but wonderfully prepared and artfully presented.
Lupita describes herself
as positive, motivated, creative, flexible and independent; exactly what every
good chef should be. She cooked at Mama Mia for 10 years before coming to Café
Oso Azul where the owner, Jens Kristian Moller, gives her a lot of freedom and
confidence; two essentials for running a first-class kitchen. When Lupita is
not at the restaurant, she’s trying to keep up with her children, ages 20,18
and 5.
Lupita is one of the
chefs on our list who is self taught. She’s earned her spot on this list
because Café Oso Azul continues to maintain a top position on Trip Advisor every
month; a tribute to owner Jens Kristian Moller and Lupita’s down-home cooking.
Mariana Gonzalez Gutierrez
Chef of Sauces and Garnishes
Áperi Restaurant
Mariana attended the Culinary
Art School in Tijuana and traveled to Mexico City where she landed an internship
at Pujol when she was just nineteen.
She went on to learn from
what she calls “the amazing women at XCATIC restaurant in Merida” and returned
to Tijuana to help her friend run her food truck.
Not feeling
particularly challenged, she decided to
return to Queretaro. When she was on the airplane back she was looking at Aeromexico's magazine and saw an article on
restaurants in San Miguel de Allende. One of them was Aperi. She fell in love
with the photographs and promptly emailed the restaurant to ask for a job. They
offered her an internship for a month and after three weeks, they hired her
full time.
She says Chef Matteo
Salas is the person who inspires her cooking; his ability to improvise is
amazing and seeing him in the kitchen every day with such passion and
dedication commands her to give everything she’s got.
She is excited about
classic, simple preparations, involving a lot of technique but still loves to
do Birria, a recipe she learned from her grandmother in Tijuana. On her day
off, you can find her making chilaquiles for breakfast and settling in to read
a new cookbook.
She would like to go
abroad; London eventually. She says “I loves to go to new places where I don’t
know anyone (like she did when she went to Merida) because it's always an
adventure. You have to work hard to have something; you have to take care of
yourself because no one is going to do it for you. You have time to think when
you are on your own, and sometimes that's what you need to find out what you
want in life.”
Monica Marquez Guerrero
Chef/Sales
Dolcenero Chocolateria de Diseño
Chef Monica Marquez
Guerrero graduated from Superior de Gastronomia and went on to do specialized
training at Espaisucre in Mexico City. She did internships with Groupo Habita
in the kitchens of Chef Enrique Olvera and at Paxia and Cool de Sac Restaurants
in Mexico City.
While at Espaisucre,
she had the opportunity to travel to Bolivia and train for seven months at
Gustu in La Paz, Bolivia. She then toured Peru to learn about its cuisine
before heading back to Mexico City and taking her position with Dolcenero.
Getting to know all aspects of the business, she is currently working in sales.
“A good dinner never ends without a good dessert” she says. She highly
recommends a Portuguese vinho verde to complement it.
On her personal
tastes, she says it’s simple: travel, photography and a good gin and tonic.
Paola Vázquez Rosendo
Chef/Owner
Queseria de Ti Sin Mi
Chef Paola Vázquez
Rosendo says her career and business have been deeply influenced by her
family’s Spanish heritage. A graduate of Centro Culinario Ambrosia in Mexico
City, she worked at Papalo and Papalotl, a vegan restaurant in Condesa, to
specifically learn about that individual style of cooking.
She says that food
today is a lifestyle and there are incredible products available so she was determined
to offer some specialty items at her shop inside Mercado Centro, Queseria de ti
sin mi. Outside of the usual cooking shows and cookbooks, she says her inspiration
comes from asking questions of older, more experienced chefs. Of her
organization, she understands that the best advertising is word of mouth.
Certainly word of
mouth has proven to be successful for Queseria de ti sin mi, one of the best charcuterie
shops in SMA.
Rocío Guardado Saenz
Chef, Salsas and Garnishes
Jacinto 1930
When Rocio was a
child, she was small and couldn’t always see what her mother was teaching her
in the kitchen. She’s worked most of her young life in the family business,
dedicated to the sale of Piñatas.
She graduated from the
Instituto Culinario Danieli in San Luis Potosi and did her internship at Aperi
and her first job at Jacinto 1930.
She likes vacuum
cooking and says she had no chance at the university to learn about the methods
of cooking like she did at Aperi and Jacinto 1930. She’s since discovered that
vacuum cooking is the best way to bring food to perfection. Her specialties are
Pozoles and Menudos. Her boss, Chef Israel Loyola, is an inspiration.
In her spare time,
when she’s not cooking, she’s a co-pilot in auto racing and has a huge passion
for V8 cars. Down the road, she wants to go to Spain to represent Mexican food
in Europe.
Silvia Contreras
Chef
Antonia Bistro SMA
Chef Silvia Contreras was
forever trying to learn to cook from family, friends and co-workers before she decided to go to the Instituto
Culinario Danieli in San Luis Potosi, where she
graduated and did a 6 month internship for Chef Alejandro
Ruiz at Casa Oaxaca.
The most
popular girl in town – her family owned dulcerias – she grew up working in the
family business. She’s never been a picky eater; she likes to try everything,
in fact, she frequently asked for extra vegetables as a child. She likes fresh
food and is constantly amazed at the amount of ingredients and variety of
dishes available in Mexico. She doesn’t have a specialty dish; she changes up
her preparation all the time. Her favorite dinner is still pretty basic, tacos.
When asked
what she learned from her mother and grandmother she says “never say there’s
nothing to eat if the refrigerator isn’t empty.” She has some favorite
cookbooks but also likes to read about the history of gastronomy. She calls
herself a perfectionist.
She loves sports; she played
volleyball for twelve years, was on basketball and football teams and played in
Ultimate Frisbee.
Sofia Antillon
Pastry Chef
Nomada cocina de interpretacion
Chef Sofia Antillon owned
her own pastry company in Guadalajara and eventually moved to SMA and worked as
Executive Chef at Café Rama.
She took a break to
have her son Leon and resumed her career as Pastry Chef at B’ui cocina de campo
in Otomi. Sofia and her husband, gifted Chef Marko Cruz, bought Nomada cocina
de interpretacion in Mercado Centro, where she has established herself as one
of the most accomplished pastry chefs in SMA.
Sofia says she gets
her inspiration by letting ideas flow and risking flavors, though without much
thought. Her dishes evolve and she interprets them her way. She likes to
experiment and learn from her mistakes. She learned from her mother and her
grandmother that everything must be very intense and full of flavor.
Sofia is one of the featured
chefs at the SMA Food Festival this year.
Sofia Moreno
Cold Chef
Jacinto 1930
When Chef Sofia Moreno
was in high school, she loved to feed all of her friends. Her two grandmothers,
who both loved to cook, have influenced her cooking. She especially enjoys
eating the flour tortillas and tamales that her grandmother from Ocotlan, Jalsico
makes.
Sofia graduated from
the Escuela Culinaria Internacional, ECI, in Guadalajara. She won a seafood
contest at ITESO, the University of Guadalajara, against three other teams of
chefs who were much more experienced than her. She did an internship at
Disney’s Coronado Springs hotel in Orlando and returned to Guadalajara to work
at Harrison’s Restaurant in Colonia Chapilita, working in bakery, one of her
favorite areas, and also breakfast. She currently works as a cold chef at
Jacinto 1930.
She has a deep respect
for the origin of Mexican cooking and is passionate about simmered food because
of the potential for flavors and the aromas. Her cooking specialties are
Focaccia and Sashimi Tuna. Her favorite cookbook is Tacopedia, the Encyclopedia
of tacos. “It’s interesting, she says, because it’s about the history of the
tortilla, everything related to maize and how it differs in other regions in
Mexico.”
She would like to go
cook in Dubai, a city that has grown impressively and is known for its diverse
food scene with over 180 nationalities living in the emirate.
Stefania Chavez Rosales
Chef/Owner
Restaurante Bar Vinos+Tapas
Chef Stefania Chrvez
Rosales attended the Escuela Superior de Gastronomia in Mexico City and
graduated from Instituto Superior de Alta Cocina (ISAC) in Juárez. She worked
as the Executive Chef at the Fiesta Inn in Juárez, was a teacher at the
Instituto del Paso and opened her first restaurant, Vostock Gastropub in
Juárez.
To learn more about
Mexican food, she took a position with PAN:AM in Oaxaca and then moved to SMA
to open Restaurante Bar Vinos+Tapas featuring Spanish and Mediterranean food. She
says she loves Mediterranean cuisine and is also inspired by her Mexican roots.
She grew up surrounded
by food and wine, where her mother and grandfather helped to distinguish her
style. Stefania knows wines; Vino + Tapas was a wine store before it opened as
a fine dining restaurant just this year. She hopes to start a culinary school
in the restaurant and open in other cities. For now, she’s happy being a part
of SMA’s dining scene.
Stefania is one of the
featured chefs at the SMA Food Festival this year.
Sunday Marie Witte
Chef/Owner
Soul Kitchen
At the age of
18, Sunday Marie Witte joined the U.S. Air Force to see the world.
She says she saw San Antonio for four years instead.
Her culinary
inspiration came from her grandmother, who cooked for the Elks club and the
Catholic church. “The woman was a force of love and good food” she says. She
came from Czechoslovakia. “Walking into her kitchen was always a place of
wonder; she was always making something beautiful from very little. The memory
of the smells and tastes of her kitchen will always be the standard of what a
happy home should be” she says.
She majored in
philosophy at the University of Illinois and by the time she was 26, she was
selling natural gas and electricity for Enron Energy Services. She moved to
Houston and worked for Koch Pipeline then moved to a management position with
Stage Stores. In 2002, when Enron and Stage Stores declared bankruptcy, she
started her own brokerage firm, Very Witte Projects. She still sells
electricity in the Texas market. In 2012, she moved to Mexico. She discovered
she loved the time and tempo of the kitchen. She decided to follow the path of
things that made her happy and that’s when she created Soul Kitchen, a SMA
e-restaurant where you can order food online.
Sunday did it backwards;
she’s got her practical training over with and is now enrolled in a culinary
program taught by David Jahnke of UNI in Celeya.
Viridiana Guadarrama Angeles
Chef in Charge
Cent’anni
Chef Viridiana
Guadarrama Angeles graduated with a degree in Gastronomy from la Universidad de
Turismo y Ciencias Administrativas in Coyoacan. Her first job was in a
bakery where the work seemed grueling however, by the second day, the smells
convinced her that it was what she wanted to do.
In her decision to
become a chef, she was influenced by mother who was an excellent cook. Her boss
at Cent’anni has given her a lot of self-confidence in the kitchen and always
asks her to change up the menu which has been a challenge but one that has
proven to be rewarding and has helped her grow professionally.
Her specialty dishes
are Custards and Risottos. She says she very passionate about pastry, the grill
and of course Italian food. If it were the last weekend on earth, she would be
in Puerto Vallarta, standing on the edge of the beach with her toes in the sand
eating a grilled fish.
She’s in the
restaurant six days a week so when she home she makes Mexican food: pozole,
other soups, and enchiladas. If she were to move to any other city, it would
probably be Mexico City where she lived as a child, but she says she would also
like to go to Cancun, where she previously lived for 6
months.
This story will also run on
LOKKAL, San Miguel de Allende’s premier e-magazine. www.loccal.com
The Female Chefs of San
Miguel will be an annual list, published every July.
In August, 2016, we will follow
up with an article on “The Maestras,” the incredible women who paved the way
for the 35 women on this list.
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