What can I say? From the moment I got to Mexico, the place got under my skin. I felt like, in some ways, I’d come home. You’ve gotta picture the scene: I’m 14 years old, not traveled much, and I landed in Mexico City at 10 p.m., worried about getting a taxi to the hotel. Well, there was no need to worry, because the place was thronging with people on the street and in the city’s parks—like it was 5 in the afternoon. We arrived at the famous old Del Prado Hotel (which suffered badly in the earthquake and is no longer there), we got to our room and looked out on life liked I’d never seen it before.
So with the next day came a barrage of awakenings—a pastry shop down the street where I ate my first French tart with mangoes and guava. “Mexican restaurants” with no combination platters, but instead pages of offerings that included squash blossom soup, chicken in almond sauce, fancy cakes . . . I was hooked.
So hooked that I finagled a trip to Mexico the next year during high school (visiting ruins, having cultural experiences, and meeting Mexican kids my age). Then I majored in Spanish language, literature and Latin American culture when I got to college. It wasn’t until I got to graduate school and tried to shake Mexico out of my system that I realized Mexico had become part of who I am. So Deann, my wife, and I moved to Mexico in 1980 to get even more intimate with the culture.
We explored markets, cataloging everything, learning to cook from market vendors and street stall cooks and fonda cooks. Over a 5-year period we visited every state in the Mexican republic absorbing the individual regional flavors. And through those years we absorbed that same generosity of spirit that had seduced me when I was 14. That love for life and color and flavor.
At the end of those years, we’d produced two things: Our first cookbook, Authentic Mexican, and a strong desire to somehow bring alive the real, regional flavors of Mexico for folks back in the U.S. That’s why we opened Frontera Grill and Topolobampo. That’s why we produce our Public Television shows and that’s why we fret so much over every ingredient, every detail of our books and our Frontera product line.
¡Buen Provecho! RB
