Chef Gonzalo Guzmán, Nopalito
By Natalia Otero
“Corn must have an incomparable flavor,” says Gonzalo Guzmán, chef and co-owner of Nopalito, one of San Francisco's most beloved restaurants for its authentic Mexican cuisine and special treatment of corn, the soul of the restaurant.
He is an expert on corn and has dedicated 17 years to offering Mexican dishes of the highest quality. He is eager for knowledge, as well as a teacher who passes on his expertise. He is the author of the book Nopalito: A Mexican Kitchen, which won a James Beard Award for “Best International Cookbook.”
He is an authentic corn taster, and his cuisine embodies a whole philosophy: cooking from the root, with respect for the land, the ingredients, and memory.
From the milpa to the table
Gonzalo was born in El Águila, a small town in southern Veracruz, Mexico, where there was no electricity or running water. From childhood, he learned the tasks of cooking not as a trade, but as part of everyday life.
"Before, when there was no electricity, I would get up at 4 a.m., take a mill attached to a piece of wood to grind the corn and a matate to make the dough fine. Then, when electricity came to the village, only one person had a grinding machine. So, I would get up at 4 a.m. to take a bucket of corn to the family that had the machine, and, along with the 600 people in the village, we would line up to grind it," recalls Chef Guzmán.
He says his mother would ask him to help her with the kitchen chores, even though it was not common for men to cook. Guzmán cooked tortillas for his sisters, never imagining that he would become so successful at it.
That intuitive learning remained etched in his memory: the aromas of roasted chili peppers, the sound of the metate, the heat of the firewood. These images are still present in his kitchen today.
At age 12, he moved to Puebla, where his family prepared mole poblano, tamales, and yocotes for parties, weddings, and funerals. “In my house, food brought people together. Cooking was about collaborating, helping each other. I learned by watching. I have a visual memory: what I see, I retain. That's how I learned everything.”
Corn as the root
When he arrived in San Francisco in 1998, he went door to door looking for work. Sometimes he worked for free, just to learn and eat.
The interior of Nopalito
One of the things he remembers most about his arrival was the first time he tasted a tortilla in the United States. “It tasted awful. I asked myself, 'What is this? Since they put a lot of things in it to preserve it, of course it didn't taste good.”
His discipline caught the attention of Laurence Jossel, his first mentor in professional cooking. “He asked me to peel carrots. I watched how he did it with potatoes or onions. I learned quickly, always asking questions.” In a few months, he mastered the basics of cooking: cuts, fish, techniques, organization.
For more than a decade, he worked tirelessly: two jobs, sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. Years later, that tenacity led him to open Nopalito with his partner, Jossel, in 2009. Then, in 2020, Jossel left the partnership so that each could focus on his own restaurant.
“When we opened Nopalito, we wanted to do everything from scratch, like in my village,” says Gonzalo. “Grinding the corn, making our dough, our tortillas, our chorizo, the bases for moles, the fresh cheese. I stay away from big companies because they put pesticides on ingredients.”
Every week, they process more than 500 pounds of corn, imported directly from Oaxaca and Puebla. “Corn is the basis of everything we do. It's our heart. That's what sets us apart from many restaurants.”
For Gonzalo, his relationship with corn is almost spiritual. "I grew up in the middle of the cornfield. If you give me a tortilla, I can identify what corn it comes from, even if it's in dough. It's like wine: if you know it, you can distinguish the flavor. If not, you just taste something that seems the same.”
He also passes this knowledge on to his children. “Corn has a soul. When you cook it well, it can transport people. Many customers tell me that when they taste our tortillas or tamales, they feel like they are back in their hometown. It's because of the incomparable flavor of the corn.”
Guzmán says that over time, the palate begins to recognize and classify authentic corn from altered corn.
The pleasure of knowledge
In 2017, the book Nopalito: A Mexican Kitchen, written by Gonzalo Guzmán, received the James Beard Award for Best International Cookbook. In it, Gonzalo shared not only recipes, but also the ancestral process of corn: from cooking it with lime to grinding it in a metate. “The secret is that there is no secret,” he says with a smile. “Just time, patience, and respect.”
He continues to teach at cooking schools, demonstrating the nixtamal process with his own hand mill. “When I show how it's done, people understand that this isn't just cooking. It's history, it's living culture.”
Today, Nopalito is much more than a restaurant. It is a community. “I never thought I would be a chef or have a restaurant. But here we have built a family, we have created a very beautiful community,” says Gonzalo.
Corn—that sacred grain—is a bridge between his homeland and his life in the north.
“I've just done my bit for education,” he says humbly. And in that sentence, as in every tortilla that comes out of his kitchen, lies the essence of his story.
Click here to read Guzmán's recipe for Shredded Beef Empanadas