Chef Adrián Herrera

MÉXICO. One of Mexico’s most famous and talented chefs. Chef Herrera as most people know him, is one of the leader chefs who brought north eastern Mexican cuisine into the spotlight. What was once just a local and regional cuisine is now part of the Mexcian food revolution the world is witnessing. Chef, TV host, restauranteur, anthropologist, writer and modern day theorist.

Chef Roberto Ruiz

MÉXICO. His restaurant, PUNTO MX, on the Salamanca barrio in beautiful Madrid has, besides several Repsol suns, the first Michelin Star for a Mexican restaurant in Europe. Since 2012 he, and 2 other Mexican entrepreneurs, opened this great spot to offer real Mexican cuisine, quickly becoming a favorite among local clients and gourmands. Back then, there was no Mexican food available on the neighborhood, but today you can find around 10 Mexican restaurants close by. Chef Roberto and his partners now have several restaurants in 3 different countries and provide a great variety of outstanding foods and drinks from Mexico to more than 2000 people per day. He is one of the young talented Mexican chefs outside the country with real knowledge and love for traditional gastronomy, a top reference of Mexican cuisine in Europe. His favorite quote: “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

Chef Drew Deckman

USA. He worked, among others, with Paul Bocuse and Jacques Maximin in France. Then he opened his first restaurant in Germany where he got a Michelin Star on his 1st year, among other recognitions. Then, while visiting Mexico, he fall in love with it’s people and it’s gastronomy and decided to leave everything behind and stay forever. Today Chef Deckman dedicates his time to his family, fishing, off road racing and to lead a great group of talented young cooks that give life to “Deckman’s en el Mogor”, a superb restaurant in the Valle de Guadalupe, on the Mexican wine country in Baja California.

Chef Rick Bayless

USA. One of the most important chefs in the US. He is a great restaurateur and a sucssesful businessman with an amazing team of talented people. Chef Rick’s love for Mexico and its food is more than legendary. He is an anthropologist on Linguistics, mastered on Spanish and Latin American culture and speaks almost perfectly Spanish, which has been useful when traveling and working with Mexican merchants, farmers, researchers, cooks, chefs, etc. He has dedicated more than 35 years of his life to master the expertise and knowledge of traditional Mexican cusine while promoting its history, roots and most valuable recipes and flavors to thousands and thousands of North American clients.

Chef Albert Adrià

SPAIN. From Barcelona, he plays a huge role in modern gastronomy as one of the most important and influential chefs in the world. He started when he was just 16 years old at El Bulli, a very famous restaurant located in the Spanish Costa Brava that became one of the most important in the history of Spain and also around the globe. Today, after more than 30 years, he has become a real commander of the kitchen and a very successful restaurateur. Recognized by Time Magazine as one of the “13 Gods of Food” in the world. His name and his restaurants are always on the lists of the hottest food guides and awards like Repsol, Michelin and The World’s 50 Best. Chef Adrià’s love for Mexico is sincere, he has invested a serious amount of time, effort and big funds on taking real Mexican food to Barcelona. Hoja Santa is a superb and recognized restaurant located in the Sant Antoni barrio in the Catalan city that, along with his talented partner Chef Paco Mendez, opened since 2014 with the idea of sharing the real taste of Mexico with their Catalan, Spanish and international clientele.

Dr. Rafael Ansón Oliart

SPAIN. Lawyer, writer, businessman and Doctor Honoris Causa by the Universidad Alfonso X El Sabio. He is a media and communication expert as he directed Radio Television Española during the Adolfo Suarez government. Currently he presides the Royal Spanish Academy of Gastronomy, that he helped to found and create with the objective of recover, preserve and update traditional, folk and anonymous Spanish cuisine.

Professor Pushpesh Pant

INDIA. A noted Indian academic, an outstanding food critic and historian and for many, the face of Indian food. He is one of India’s leading experts on International Relations. For 40 years, he has popularized ancient Indian food culture and inspired contemporary chefs. One of his books, “The Indian Cookbook”, a New York Times bestseller, is probably the largest and heaviest Indian food book to ever come out of India. An entire generation of Indian chefs credit him with opening their eyes to the richness and strategic possibilities of Indian cooking traditions, making him the catalyst for a renaissance of Indian food around the world. Padma Shri Pushpesh Pant is the chronicler of Indian food by excellence.

Chef Juana Bravo Lazaro

MÉXICO. From the Purhépecha indigenous community of Angahuan, in the state of Michoacan, Mexico. Juanita, like people usually call her, was part of the Mexican traditional cuisine experts that traveled to Paris, France and Nairobi, Kenia, to prove before the UNESCO and cultural authorities of the international community that gastronomy and culinary traditions in México, do have the same cultural level as music, literature, architecture, painting and other artistic and scientific expressions found in human societies and cultures.

César Calderón “Gourmand”

MÉXICO. Journalist, writer, food critic and musician. In the last 8 years, Cesar and his team have managed to create one of the largest food blogs in the country, where they recognize chefs and dishes, recommend restaurants and provide updated opinions on traditional and modern day Mexican food, but also share serious and severe analysis and critics to restaurants owners and to many kitchen professionals and entrepreneurs in Mexico. His voice is heard mainly in Mexico, but have followers in many countries in both North and South America and Europe.

Clang Garcia

PHILIPPINES. Clang is a writer from Manila, TV host, curator, and crusader of the Filipino Culinary Heritage. She has been conducting a niche concept of “Cultural Food Mapping” across the country that chronicles the inventory of heritage dishes, with a mission to understand the relationship of food with history, culture, people, and geography. She has received many awards and recognitions for her outstanding contribution to the Filipino Culinary Heritage and an expert on the undeniable relation and similarities between Mesoamerican and Asian ingredients and food influences.

Dr. Ana Valenzuela

MÉXICO. A highly skilled scientist and academic. She is an agronomist and has mainly worked with agave, magueyes and henequen plants for the last 25 years. Her work is botany, ethnology-botany and agricultural related, but also has worked on the cultivation industry of tequila and mezcal, on the Denomination of origin and on the history of distilling. She has been part for the most important tequila business groups in México like Tequila Herradura and Tequila Sauza. She left the business of cultivation and went back to the university and got several masters on business and agriculture, then a doctorate on Biology, another doctorate on Biodiversity and Denomination of origin and a post doctorate on Asian distilling.

Hugo d’Acosta

MÉXICO. Hugo d’Acosta is one of Mexico’s most renowned winemakers and a leading enologist. From Mexico City, many years ago Hugo went to live right into the heart of the wine country, becoming a industry pioneer on the Valle de Guadalupe in Baja California state in northern Mexico. He plays a key role as one of the most influential characters in the Mexican wine revolution happening today. A consultant for a number of wineries and beverage entrepreneurs, and considered a celebrity wine guru whose highly valued bottles are always present on some of the very best restaurants.

Chef Michael Giovan “Tatung” Sarthou III

PHILIPPINES. Chef, journalist, writer and TV host. A celebrity in the Asian archipelago. Chef Tatung as most people knows him, is not only recognized in the Philippines but internationally as well. He was one of only two Manila based chefs invited to speak at Madrid Fusión Manila, the first and only Asian edition of the most important gastronomy congress in the world, held yearly in Spain. Always a real passionate about Filipino food, he was named the “World’s best TV celebrity chef outside Europe” at the 22nd Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2017.

Dr. Gloria López Morales

MÉXICO. Journalist, writer, university professor and diplomat. She graduated from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and from the Colegio de Mexico, specialized in Middle Eastern relations. Later she did her masters and doctorate degree at the Paris-Sorbonne University. Dra. Gloria López Morales, was the head of the cultural office for UNESCO in Paris, France and Havana, Cuba. Today she directs the Mexico City based Conservatorio de la Cultura Gastronómica Mexicana. Since 1998, Dr. Gloria was the person that first saw the important relation between the Mexican culinary cultural treasure and the social-economic development of the country, so she opened and created the way for Mexico and other countries to achieve the UNESCO gastronomic recognition by creating and leading a very talented group of intellectuals, academics, professors and many other people on different fields to make the dream a reality.

Benito Taibo

MÉXICO. Writer, poet, historian, journalist and anthropologist. He is celebrated writer in México and Latin America. He has worked for TV, radio and several newspapers. Very popular among Mexico’s youth, a part of the population where he enjoys more celebrity and where he dedicates his efforts into the promotion of art, history and literature. Benito is a university professor and currently the president of Radio UNAM, the radio station for the largest university in Mexico. He grew up into a gastronomic family, his father was one of the first persons to write great gastronomy books In Mexico, on moles, on food history and on the creation of Mexican food.

Chef Margarita Carrillo Arronte

MÉXICO. Chef, writer, restaurateur and business woman. Original from the state of Chihuahua in Mexico’s beautiful north. Chef Margarita spent much of her childhood in the kitchen. She was lucky to see and learn from her mother and grandmother cooking and techniques, like most of the best chefs have done. She is a member of the Mexico City based Conservatorio de la Cultura Gastronómica Mexicana and was part of the team that successfully took Mexican traditional food to the UNESCO (2005 and 2010). Chef Margarita is a real ambassador to Mexican food, she has represented her country in the US, Japan, France and other countries many times in her career.

Eduardo Angeles

MÉXICO. Specialized in agricultural engineering and mezcal distillation. Eduardo is a businessman from Santa Catarina Minas, state of Oaxaca. He is the fourth generation of distillers on a family that has been working on the trade for more than 150 years. In the exciting world of mezcal, Eduardo is a real purist, he insists on absolute adherence to traditional rules and procedures, especially in the caring of the agave plants and in the procedure in which the distillation process occurs. The language, flavor and style they master, is the same it was 200 yeas ago.

Chef Abigail Mendoza

MÉXICO. Chef Abigail story is unique. She has cooked for Jimmy Carter, Mel Gibson, for famous late Chef Anthony Bourdain, for singers, actors and many other hip celebrities. Way before chefs had rockstar status and before the Food Network and before all the fancy cuisine awards, Chef Abigail’s restaurant Tlamanalli (in Oaxaca) had already been named one of the best restaurants in the world by The New York Times (1993). She and the rest of the Mendoza sisters opened Tlamanalli 30 years ago and have managed very well by making it a popular touristic destination for anybody visiting the state. This great restaurant only works from 1 to 4 pm and under strict reservation only. Abigail and her sisters have witnessed the love and popularity that Mexican food has gained in the last 20 years, and thanks to this new cultural interest and food tourism, many traditional cooks like her and her sisters are getting a fair trade for their hard work and ancient knowledge.

Chef Alejandro Ruiz Olmedo

MÉXICO. Chef, writer, entrepreneur, businessman. Chef Alex, as many people knows him, is one of the most important chefs in México. Original from the state of Oaxaca, he has been a huge promoter of drinks, food and traditions from his state for the last 30 years. His restaurant, Casa Oaxaca in the city of Oaxaca, has been awarded non stop since 2008 by the most important food reviewers in the world like the Star Diamond Award, Gourmet Awards, The World 50 Best, Travel and Leisure Gourmet Awards, etc, etc. Chef Alex, besides being a great cook, chef and businessman, is a reference on Mexican culinary culture and a voice with authority on his community.

Chef Lupita Vidal

MÉXICO. Meet Chef Lupita, owner and creator of Cevicheria Tabasco. Chef Lupita’s story is one of success. She and her husband, started this project in the state of Tabasco many years ago with a vision and no support from anybody. Slowly, with a lot of love, work and dedication they have managed become one of best restaurants for ceviches and traditional local seafood in the whole state. Lupita is a master when it comes to cooking and running a kitchen. Another clear example of the discipline and strenght of women in a world traditionally dominated by male chefs and cooks .

Chef Roberto Solis

MÉXICO. From Mérida, a very important and crucial gastronomic destination in the country and the most iconic and legendary city in the Yucatán Peninsula. Chef Roberto’s story on how he opened his restaurant 17 years ago, simply following a dream, and then becoming one of the best chefs in México is very special. He started his restaurant Nectar because he loved good food and nightlife. At the beginning nobody believed in his idea, it was a long way up until he made it happen. So after many years of experience cooking in his city and after spending months of training (year after year) with the world’s most admired chefs, today Nectar restaurant is a mandatory spot for locals and tourists and Chef Roberto is, without a doubt, the best chef in Mérida and of course, one of the best in México.

Dr. Sarah Bak-Geller Corona

MÉXICO. Sarah Bak-Geller Corona is a professor and researcher at the Institute of Anthropological Research, UNAM. Member of the National System of Researchers. Ph.D. in history from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris, France). Former student of École Normale Supérieure (Ulm-Paris) and Hong Kong University. Her lines of research focus on the political dimension of food practices and modes of representation of food in the contexts of colonialism and nation-building in Mexico and Latin America. Her works on cuisine, culture and power range over different themes, such as: food, body and race in Latin America; recipe books and national identities; food languages and construction of citizenship; and the processes of heritage of indigenous cuisines in America. She is part of the Mexican Group of Anthropology of Food and is an associate member of the laboratory Patrimoines Locaux of the National Museum of Natural History, in France. She is the author of several national and international publications.

Chef Gérard Dupont

FRANCE. Chef Gérard Dupont. With over 65 years of experience in the kitchen, Chef Gerard Dupont has witnessed the evolution of Mexican cuisine and has gained insight in the culinary arts through his work in Mexico and around the world. Having started his career in France at the age of 13, he would be awarded his first position as chef at Le Fouquet in Mexico City at 26. Here he would develop his passion for French cuisine in Mexico. What is the real sense of the french word “gastronomy”? What is the difference between traditional food and “repas gastronomique” for UNESCO? These and more great ideas are shared by Chef Dupont. Besides being a master chef, Chef Gérard served as the president of the Culinary Academy of France for more than 18 years and today still holds the title of honorary president. A title he carries with pride on his travels around the world, including Mexico, a country that he admires greatly and gladly visits several times per year.

Chef Nico Mejía

MÉXICO. He was born in Tijuana, but lives in Colima, a unique state in the west coast of México. Nico, besides being a successful chef, is a great restauranteur, an advisor in several international affairs, an author and investigator, a businessman and a long life surfer. From The Culinary Art School, Nico has been part of kitchens in South America and Europe, his knowledge and expertise on seafood and local staples are now part of many restaurant projects and menus, and his main restaurant “La Sal” in Manzanillo (Colima) is a classic spot and a favorite among locals, tourists, common foodies and gastro explorers. He has published several fantastic books related to the great state: COLIMA. Chef Nico shares with us his knowledge on Asian influences on the west coast of Mexico, from specific ancestral dishes, to ingredients, to distillation techniques which are now part of the Mexican culinary landscape.

Chef Hugo Guajardo

MÉXICO. Chef Hugo Guajardo, from Monterrey in northern México, owns and runs El Jonuco, a gastronomic establishment that serves excellent food and shares real culture. Famous for its classic regional and traditional fare this great restaurant illustrates the authentic northeastern Mexican culinary spirit and celebrates the ingredients and recipes that have been prepared and consumed for generations in states like Nuevo Leon, Coahuila and Tamaulipas. Chef Hugo never went to culinary school and was on a different path until he became honest with his passion and is now a successful self-taught chef. An inspiring story of someone who fought against all odds to follow his passion and open a successful restaurant sharing great food and a complete gastronomic experience. Since then Chef Hugo and his restaurant has been in constant evolution as he himself describes, which makes it one of our favorites in the northeastern capital.