JESSE
Ultra Nomad
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Registered: 11-5-2002
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THE SILENT SUCCESS OF MEXICAN CHEFS
You won?t see them on the cooking shows, but many of the best chefs in L.A.?s French, Italian, and Asian restaurants are Latino
~ By RICHARD FOSS ~
The caller on talk radio was as forceful and articulate as she was angry. ?The Mexicans who are coming across the border are taking dead-end jobs in
hotels and restaurant kitchens,? she opined, adding, ?They?re a permanent underclass that will never integrate into the broader community.? The host
of the show didn?t argue the point, moving on to questions of payroll taxes instead, but I was still fixated on the caller?s assertion. Jobs as
busboys and dishwashers, a dead end? I remembered a French chef telling me that all the best chefs he knew had started at the bottom, and decided to
see if things had changed.
I started at the Pacific Grille in downtown L.A., a noted California/Asian restaurant. The gingery vegetable dumplings were followed by asparagus soup
with toasted walnuts, and monkfish in Chinese lobster sauce, but the best part of the meal was the conversation with executive chef Manuel Diaz. ?Some
people are surprised when they go to an Asian restaurant and the chef is from Mexico,? he mused. ?They ask who created the recipes, and I tell them, I
did. A few have been skeptical, but then they taste what I?m doing.?
Diaz came to California at 16 with little money and no connections and took a job as a dishwasher in a French restaurant. As he tells it, ?I was
watching the chefs on the line, and it looked like what they were doing was fun and challenging. They saw that I was paying attention, and they asked
if I wanted to learn a few things. I told them, yes, I want to be a chef. After a year I became sous-chef and later executive chef. Coming from the
bottom to the top was a lot of work, but I know some things about the way a restaurant really works that they don?t teach you in school.?
I had heard a persistent rumor that some French and Italian restaurants tried to hide the fact that they had a Mexican chef, fearing that they might
lose some snob appeal. Diaz was guarded, saying only that he heard it has happened, but never to him. He explained, ?At the French restaurant where I
was executive chef, even the French customers had no problem. If they wanted proof, it was there. I prove what I can do every day.?
I had to know if his experience was unique, so I asked a well-known French restaurateur, Guy Gabriele. Gabriele owns two restaurants, Caf? Pierre and
Zazou, both with Hispanic managers and chefs, but he confirmed that not all owners share his broadmindedness. ?I know of some restaurants where the
owners don?t want to admit their chef isn?t French,? he said, ?and there are probably many others where there is a glass ceiling and nobody who isn?t
French will get the executive position. The funny thing is that the food will be better at the place where they just let the best chef rise. French
chefs are known for their bad attitude, not relating to the other personnel in the kitchen. I had a French chef, a guy from Nice, and he had a Mexican
assistant. The assistant actually had more finesse, more artistry than the master. He was intelligent and sensitive, and I had to build up his
confidence so that when the Frenchman went back home, he knew he could take over. The French chef came back to visit a year later and couldn?t believe
what the guy was doing.?
If this is the case, that some of the best chefs in Los Angeles are Latinos, why haven?t we heard of them? Where are their cookbooks, radio shows, TV
appearances? After all, the people who are best known for making Mexican food in L.A. are Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feininger of the Border Grill,
neither of whom is from Mexico. If Mexicans can?t even get famous for making Mexican food, how can they make it big in the broader world of cuisine?
Guy Gabriele thinks it?s not about cooking, but self-promotion. ?The Mexican who comes to work here, who becomes a chef not just to make a living but
because he loves it ? he probably has a language issue,? Gabriele notes. ?Not that he can?t speak adequate English, but because he doesn?t speak it
well enough to feel comfortable mingling with his guests at the restaurant. He may be a great chef but is shy.?
The Pacific Grille?s Diaz agrees. ?Growing up in Durango, there were many people working very hard, but never growing their businesses, never
promoting them,? he says. ?In Mexico, you don?t really learn how to do that. Here you come and you get the skills, but you have no polish. You don?t
speak the language perfectly, you?re used to being in the background. You?re a success, but nobody knows but your friends and family. You don?t see a
lot of us on TV cooking shows?. In the future, we?re going to be on those shows, and not just on Spanish-language TV, but we?re not there yet.?
The media isn?t the only avenue to popular recognition, but as Chef di Cucina Francisco Velasco of Il Grano restaurant pointed out, working as a chef
makes it difficult to participate in cultural and educational events. ?I work six days a week and I have a family. It?s not like I don?t want to have
a voice in the community, mentor someone else, but I don?t have the time,? he says.
As the Salvadoran-born Velasco notes, when you?re a successful chef in a tony Westside neighborhood and the majority of your ethnic community lives
elsewhere, it makes things more difficult. ?I am better known outside the Salvadoran community than in it,? he adds. ?I was interviewed about six
months ago for the Beverly Hills newspaper, but nobody in my community reads the Beverly Hills newspaper, so they don?t know about it.?
One of L.A.?s Mexican chefs who has achieved wide renown is Hugo Molina, who became famous at The Parkway Grill before opening his current venture,
The Spanish Kitchen. Molina, who was recently named one of the top 25 chefs in the world, reiterated the lack of an entrepreneurial culture in Mexico.
?Many chefs from Mexico and Central America don?t have the financial skills to open their own restaurants,? he notes. ?You have grown up in a village,
you don?t know about establishing credit with suppliers, making deals to lease a building. They grew up in a cash society, maybe even part cash and
part barter, they don?t know about making a business plan. It?s not that they aren?t great chefs. They have worked their way up, learned things about
the rhythm of a restaurant that can?t be taught in culinary school.?
Molina agreed that there?s a problem when successful professionals aren?t role models for others, and said he is surprised at the places where he
meets Mexican chefs. ?I was in Benihana of Tokyo and there?s this guy doing all this fancy knife work, and I thought, where in Japan do they teach
this? I talked with him and found out he was from Michoacan,? he says. ?He learned in L.A., he?s making good money, and I?m sure there are thousands
like him.?
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Bruce R Leech
Elite Nomad
Posts: 6796
Registered: 9-20-2004
Location: Ensenada formerly Mulege
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Mood: A lot cooler than Mulege
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thanks for posting that Jesse.
most people don't realize that if you took all the Mexicanos out of the restaurants that there would be very few left open. even 3,4 and 5 star
restaurants.
when I got out of culinary school I went right to work as a pot washer in a 3 star restaurant for 1.65% of the tips only no wage. 8 months later I got
promoted to bus boy.
Bruce R Leech
Ensenada
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bajalera
Super Nomad
Posts: 1875
Registered: 10-15-2003
Location: Santa Maria CA
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An interesting post, Jesse. Thanks!
\"Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest never happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.\" -
Mark Twain
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