Veronica Lopez
Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series about female chefs making their mark in the world of Mexican/Latin cuisine. Click here to read the first story in this series and click here to read the second story in the series.
By Kathleen Furore
Veronica Lopez quite clearly remembers the first time she tried to bake a cake as a child in Queretero, her hometown near Mexico City.
“I saw how my mother's great-aunt made delicious things, and I tried to do it at home. My mother let me do it…obviously with other results. One day I made a cake that looked delicious, but I forgot to put sugar in it,” Lopez laughs.
It’s the story she tells when asked when she knew she wanted to become a chef.
But that childhood dream wasn’t one she would realize without challenges. Her gender was one of them.
As she recently told The Grunion Gazetter (a publication in Long Beach, California), one comment in particular stung as she was just starting her culinary career: “You will never be a chef, just a housewife” she was told.
The naysayers were wrong.
Today, Lopez runs the kitchen at Next Door by Agaves, a contemporary Mexican restaurant that opened in late spring next to the popular Agaves Ultra Lounge (where Lopez once helmed the kitchen, too) in Long Beach, Calif.
Determination Fuels the Drive
Determined to prove ‘housewife’ would not to be her destiny, Lopez headed to the Instituto Gastronomico de Estudios Superiores Mexico, where she earned a bachelor's degree in culinary studies.
It was there that she perfected her cooking skills and learned more about the history of Mexican food—two things that ultimately fueled her culinary journey.
“I think the most important [things in cooking] are the basics, and the school where I studied involved me in the love for my Mexican cuisine,” Lopez says. Those four years in academia, “…gave me the opportunity to live with people and communities that allowed me to be part of the documentation and rescue of old recipes, supporting teachers in writing research books,” Lopez says.
Post-graduation, she worked as a chef in Mexico and in England before a restaurant in America beckoned.
“It was a restaurant in Louisiana that had nothing to do with Mexican cuisine, but that I knew would lead the way,” Lopez recalls. “I remember very well that my bosses loved me to make them carnitas and Mexican rice.”
But her goal was to introduce the food of her homeland to restaurant diners—a goal she realized when she came to Long Beach and Agaves Ultra Lounge.
“I have six years working for the company,” says Lopez, who notes that the company “just took a turn” when it moved the kitchen from the lounge space to create Next Door by Agaves. “…as in any business you always have to try to be better.”
Keeping Tradition Alive
Lopez’s goal at Agaves Next door is to create recipes that recall the flavors and traditions of her homeland —just as she tried to do in a small way when she baked that cake in her mother’s kitchen so many years ago.
“I want that people who come to eat know that they will receive, apart from the best service, dishes with a lot of flavor, reminiscent of what grandma's rice tastes [like], the taste of mama's pozole, roasted meat with nopales,” Lopez explains. “What did you eat when you came home to eat with the family? Those flavors that remind you of what has already been lost, the family life, comfort…and it is delicious!”
Those dishes include carne asada, carnitas and chile verde, plus specialties like Pollo Enchipotlado—roasted chicken served over chipotle sauce with garlic and epazote and served with roasted potatoes and tortillas.
And so, in some ways, this accomplished chef—who was once told she would be relegated to a home kitchen in Mexico—has come full circle. She surmounted the obstacles she faced as a female in a male-dominated profession, and now is creating modern translations of the kind of “comfort food” she ate in Mexican kitchens as a child.
Things, she says, are changing—in Mexico and the U.S.
“It is a matter of evolution and culture,” Lopez says of female finally being accepted as equals in the kitchen. “I think it is not [about] success, but about work and leadership. Demonstrate with facts that you know what you are doing… it is not easy because you are also [going to be] wrong [at times]…you simply learn how babies do it—if you fall you get up!”
Her advice to women coming up in the industry?
Be humble, put forth your best effort and, Lopez concludes, “Your work will speak for you.”
Kathleen Furore is the editor of el Restaurante.
Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series about female chefs making their mark in the world of Mexican/Latin cuisine. Click here to read the first story in this series and click here to read the second story in the series.