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Let Me Be Weird: Claudette Zepeda on “Cooking the Borderlands”
The Museum of Food and Drink
MOFAD
https://www.mofad.org/
Wed June 3, 2026: Claudette Zepeda and Francis Lam in conversation about her upcoming book Cooking the Borderlands
https://mofad.ticketing.veevartapp.com/tickets/view/list/cooking-the-borderlands
https://www.mofad.org/program-detail-page/borderlands
MOFAD Programs
https://www.mofad.org/programs
Claudette Zepeda
https://chefclaudettezepeda.com/
Cooking the Borderlands: Spice and Smoke Between Mexico and the States
https://sites.prh.com/cookingtheborderlands/#preorder-the-book
Tacos La Poblanita
Corner of Jay St and York St
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Mon-Sat 10-5
Jasar Castillo
929-245-3098
Michael Szczerban
https://www.instagram.com/foreverbeard/
The Talisman of Happiness
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/ada-boni/the-talisman-of-happiness/9780316577991/?lens=little-brown-and-company
TRANSCRIPT
Ivan De Luce (ID): Welcome to RadioMOFAD, the podcast from the Museum of Food and Drink. Hey Bernadette, how's it going?
Bernadette Cura (BC): Hey Ivan, it's rainy at the museum today. It's a rainy Saturday. We had quite a good crowd because people love the museum on a rainy day.
ID: They do. I know I do.
BC: Yeah, me too. People do a lot of photoshoots here in Dumbo. I don't know if you knew this. I mean, you know. I don't know if you all know this. People come for their weddings and their quinceañera photo shoots in all their finery and are taking beautiful pictures. There's a whole entourage of people right behind us now taking pictures.
ID: Yeah, there are about four or five five-year-olds running around in dresses and tuxedos chasing each other. We do see that everyday. But yes, we've had a lot of fun at MOFAD lately. We've had some great events.
BC: Yeah, you know, we talked with Michael Szczerban last episode. You were on the Zoom for that event.
ID: Yes, I attended the Talisman of Happiness event with Michael Szczerban over Zoom just to get a different sense of what it's like to attend a MOFAD event. It was great. It was a wonderful talk. Michael Szczerban talked with Deb Perelman from Smitten Kitchen.
BC: Sweet, sweet.
ID: They talked about the 1929 cookbook by Ada Boni called The Talisman of Happiness, and it was a great talk, I mean, we had a great talk with him last episode, but Deb was asking about kind of how the book compares to other books. It's not your typical cookbook in so many ways, not just because of the 12 minestrones that you can choose from in it, out of the 1600 recipes in there, it's a huge book, but also because it's not full of fancy, glossy photos. Cookbooks in the 20s definitely weren't. Michael was comparing it to the Silver Spoon cookbook, which many of us are familiar with.
BC: Yes
ID: It's a beautiful book, much like the fancy Silver Spoon that sits in the kitchen, and maybe isn't touched every day, whereas Michael sort of compared it to Nonna's worn wooden spoon that's been in the sauce all day on a Sunday, chipped and worn, but full of love, and has made so many things, and is used every single day.
BC: Well, I know that for me, as far as like The Joy of Cooking, which is what it was compared to a lot. I definitely use that book a lot, and there's no room for pictures. You want the words, you want the solid recipes.
ID: Yes, and Michael had said that he wanted it to stick to 1000 pages and not go beyond that.
Well, I think I'd rather, for a book like that, that's really useful in the kitchen, I'd rather not have pictures, and like we talked about in the podcast, that illustrations are really additional information that's helpful, and they're really cute. So I'm glad, I'm glad they stuck to that formula,
and I cannot wait to get this book. I get excited about all our cookbooks that we have in the museum, but this one seems really special.
BC: Definitely. So, as far as events, that one was great, and we have more coming up.
ID: In June, we'll see Claudette Zepeda and her new book, Cooking the Borderlands.
BC: Yes, she grew up in San Diego, and also in Tijuana. So, the foods that she grew up with, she's going to talk about it. What are the elements and the ingredients and the influences that came together to make that very special cuisine there, where she's from? And we're excited to host her here. And you know, I'm from Fort Worth, Texas, and there's Tex Mex cuisine there, and I'm wondering, like, what the similarities might be, since it's Mexican American, so I'm curious about that, and I think you told me, Ivan, that you're not that well-versed in Mexican food to begin with, so there's a whole world for you to discover
ID: When it comes to Mexican food, I know Mexican food in New York really well, and I love it, but when I meet people from California, they say you gotta have California Mexican food, it's totally different, and it sounds like this border area, you know, between Tijuana, San Diego, and these other towns there have some kind of distinct thing going on, like a lot of regions do, and I would imagine that the Texas Tex-Mex thing is super different as well.
BC: Definitely, definitely. And that's what's so great about regionalism in cuisine, is that we do have things in common, but they're also unique. So I'm excited to discover all that when she's here and during our talk with her on the podcast,
ID: Yes, let's take a listen to that interview with Claudette.
ID: Welcome to Radio Mofad, the podcast from the Museum of Food and Drink. Chef and author Claudette Zepeda grew up on both sides of the California-Mexico border, a first-generation. Mexican American, where the mixing of vibrant culinary traditions informed her food. Claudette has served as executive chef at El Jardin, appeared on Top Chef as well as Iron Chef Mexico, and now has a new cookbook, Cooking the Borderlands: Spice and Smoke Between Mexico and the States. Claudette will appear at MOFAD on June 3 in conversation with editor Francis Lam to discuss borderlands culture, migration, and the stories behind the recipes that shaped Claudette's life growing up between Mexico and the US
ID: So your new book, Cooking the Borderlands, centers around the mixing of these cultures that you grew up with, you know, between California and Mexico. It's a unique blend of cultures in this particular area, and I guess I was wondering what you love most about this kind of food.
Claudette Zepeda (CZ): I love that there's, you know, on the border, I should say, as a chef, especially cooking Mexican food in the United States, people always want to put us in a box of, like, well, where's this from, and where's that from, and you know, is this tradition to use words like traditional or authentic Mexican food? It's hard to receive when you're a creative and you just want to create, and as a border kid, and that sensibility that I learned because of being on the border and living with one foot in both countries, I learned that the sensibility of the food in the borderlands has no borders. It does not answer to whoever set the barrier of does it go this way or that way. Food is so fluid, as a border kid, because I mean, the book trespasses the entire border, from San Diego, Tijuana to Tamaulipas in Texas. The dichotomy doesn't change between any of those regions, it changes geographically, and the food changes, but the sensibility is the same. I was like, we don't care what barriers you put up, food doesn't answer to those.
BC: Yeah, that's a tricky question to answer, and kind of annoying, like, what is traditional? Because I'm from the Philippines, I know what my parents cooked, and it has a lot of elements of traditional, but it also has a lot of elements of, like, what you can get in Fort Worth, Texas, as a Filipina,
CZ: Yeah
BC: you know, like, and it wasn't a lot, so it creates its own authenticity, and I think, as Americans, we have to go through that a lot in different parts of the country. People want that authenticity, and I, a lot of it, I'm not sure, has to do with being PC. Is that true? I mean, I don’t know.
CZ: I think a lot of it has to do with their most people are uncomfortable in the, in the uncomfortable, so they think to they need something safe, and I hate the word approachable, but they need you to be palatable, Right, and I feel like sometimes I'm just like, just let me be weird, authenticity is very personal, and tradition, you could have one neighborhood block in Mexico, everyone's making albondigas, and every single one will taste different, because every single family has their own traditions, and they're not static.
BC: Yeah, I love that. Let me be weird. You want me to be weird! I promise it's gonna taste better.
CZ: Exactly, and I'm also not an 80-year-old grandmother cooking over wood fire, and like, with you know, I would love that one day. I want that, but currently that's not where I'm at.
BC: Oh man, yeah.
ID: And Bernadette, you said Fort Worth, Texas. I mean, that's Tex-Mex food that you were kind of growing up having as well, right?
BC: Well, yeah, and I really, I'm not really sure about, like, what the roots specifically of Tex-Mex are, but I know there's a lot of that ranch cuisine in Texas food because of the beef industry, and you mentioned that earlier. I wonder if they have, if there's anything similar there, but no, it really is much different from the stuff in San Diego and Tijuana.
CZ: Yeah, and you mean Texas all the way to El Paso, you have the Chihuahua border, you have the Nogales, you have Juarez, you have all these...I mean,Texas is a huge state, so within that one state, and you have the Native Americans that live, you know, the Tarahumara people, the Rarámuri that are on the other side in Mexico, on the Sierra Nevadas, and the Sierra Madre is like that, is very different climate, very different adaptability that those first people have had to really familiarize themselves with the land. But also do without a lot, you know, like how do you feed a family with very little resources? And sometimes like the climate is really uninhabitable to a lot of people, but they, that's their, what they know, and what they're raised in. So 1000’s of years of generations.
BC: Where you were in Tijuana and San Diego, what were the products like?
CZ: Well I'm so spoiled, you know, fortunate enough to travel to six of the seven continents cooking food. Making tortillas in the craziest corners of the world, but I am always very hesitant to, like, send - you got to send an ingredient list when you're going to go cook somewhere, and I try to take to remove my San Diego, California, Southern California chip from my brain, because I understand how spoiled we are. Everything grows here, it's, you know, the 76 and sunny is a true statement. There's pockets of not 76 and sunny, but I'm also on the border, so if I need a Mexican ingredient, I cross from five minutes, I'm in Tijuana and atthe Mercado, and then I cross another five minutes with Global Entry. So I understand that my circumstances are unique as a border human being, and Tijuana, being where I grew up, it's very familiar to me. I don't see it as going to another country, I see it as the
“other side” is what we called it growing up, but I do have ingredients from all of the Republic of the entire country of Mexico end up in Tijuana because most people migrated to Tijuana.
ID: And speaking of that sort of exchange of ingredients, your book starts by mentioning the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the drawing of the border between the US and Mexico, you know, at times following geographic features like rivers, and at times just an arbitrary straight line, you know, and then you talk about San Diego today, where you have access to pretty much whatever you need. How was that exchange of ingredients back then versus today? You know, what did that look like?
CZ: Well, I mean, I can't speak to the chefs in the 1800’s and how they were cooking, but I can speak to the sensibility that Tijuanenses have, and I think it's more - it's more on the mindset and the way we think about food in Tijuana - is everything's welcome at our table. I don't think there's any country that can say that doesn't have some sort of ugly past and ugly history, and we have it. There's, you know, racism that is really prevalent to this day in Mexico, but no matter what, Tijuana has become home to so many different human beings and accents and cultures that it changed the landscape of the culinary quilt of that is Tijuana, and for I mean, I just see it as like the ingredients that were in my pantry were not different. They weren't quote unquote different, and or weird, but I had, you know, soy sauce, and I had a lot of Asian ingredients, which Chinese and Japanese cultures that are, you know, really prevalent in Baja. Those were always in my, in my pantry, and going out to Chinese food every Sunday was not weird, and my dad emigrated to the states in the 60’s, so he had a little bit more of a gourmand’s, so to speak, palate, because he, you know, was able to go out and eat in restaurants in LA that weren't, you know, available in Tijuana, or in Mexico, or in Jalisco, where he's from, so I think overall Tijuana, Tijuanenses have a sort of fluidity to them, nothing's a big deal, everything is figure-outable, and it's like, oh, you don't have this either,
you have this, you know, it's like, oh, I don't have salt, but I have soy sauce, and you know, it's adapting and overcoming over every single obstacle, because the entire city of Tijuana was built on, now especially, built on people that wanted to follow the pursuit of the American dream, and then couldn't, and had to land in Tijuana and make it their home. So it had the resilience of Tijuanenses, it’s very special, and that translates to starting as a ranch, Rancho Tijuana, to what Tijuana Baja California is today. I mean, it's the promise land for a lot of young, talented chefs, even in San Diego, that they can't open a restaurant here, so they go to Tijuana, and they’re earning Michelin stars. It is such a foundational, pivotal well of creativity. I mean, and we, I feel like we all love it in that way.
BC: I had no idea that Tijuana was like that. I can't wait to check it out the next time I'm over there.
CZ: The media does a really shitty job (Sorry, pardon my French) does a really sad job painting it as, villainizing the border. And as someone who's lived here my whole life, there's a lot of pretty and beautiful things about it too.
BC: Well, just getting back to the book a little bit, your second chapter talks about matriarchs. How did the matriarchs in your family influence you to become a cook? How did they influence who you are growing up also?
CZ: It was really important for me, you know, as I was talking to Francis about what, how the book was going to shape up, the original 100 recipes that I've written down, kind of. I mean, I would say maybe half of them made it, half of them changed, and the biggest part was like the “cooking off my matriarch’s hips” was because as a child I was the only girl in a house full of boys, go figure, I picked the most like boy-centric career, but it's it. Was understanding, like, the role of nurturing. It was really bestowed on me by my matriarchs, and because my family, on both my mom's side and my dad's side, are from Nayaritan Jalisco, both of them, and understanding that Tijuanenses, most of them migrated to Tijuana, because it was not - it was a ranch that everyone went to for vacations, those were casinos, where it wasn't a place where a lot of people lived, and my matriarchs, my mother, my grandmother, my mom had 16 kids, and they were all born in different parts of Mexico, and as she was going to the different states, because of where work was available for her and my grandfather, they would pick up dishes from the regional, you know, Mexico has seven regions of cuisine. Every region has multiple states, multiple cities, and a lot of dishes in them. She started collecting these dishes, so by the time she got to Tijuana, and she was raising her grandchildren, we grew up eating chongos zamoranos from Zamora Michoacán, we grew up eating sopa de lima from Yucatan, we grew up eating birria, because we're from Jalisco, but it was all these flavors that I was really spoiled to have, and not every family did that, you know, that some people never leave their pocket and then migrate, so all they know is, you know, Sonorense food, or all they know is that region, and my family, since they were a little nomadic by me, by socioeconomics, it really, I needed to talk about those recipes, because they might start from somewhere else, but they taste different, and they tasted different to me.
BC: So, when you were talking about your dad being a gourmand and being somewhere where he could enjoy a lot of food, your mom also enjoyed a lot of food because of her work and how she had to move around, and that's why you're traveling the globe and exploring, that's really interesting stuff.
CZ: Yeah, I was, I was, have a gypsy soul, and I obviously it has a little to do with my family, but my mom learned how to cook when she met my dad. Funny enough, because my mother did all the cooking, my mom, by watching PBS, because again he had been living in the country for 20 years, he gifted her, and when they met in Tijuana, The Joy of Cooking, and a couple of Julia Child's volumes of her cookbooks. So I remember growing up, my house, my kitchen was a nightmare. It was just like I remember a pressure cooker exploding, but the magazines, and like, the thoughts of my mom trying to please my dad, and being like, oh, I made this, and I made that, and him having a craving, and her going, “Shit, how am I going to do this?” Okay, and so she learned, and we were the benefactors of that learning process.
ID: It's so interesting, you've got all these great influences, you know, Julia Child included, like that kind of influencing your childhood, you know, before you even realized it.
CZ: Oh yeah, she taught us how to speak English. We're ESL, we were only speaking Spanish, and all my life we only spoke Spanish at home, and PBS is how we watched, you know, Sesame Street, all the BBC shows, Are You Being Served, Mr. Bean, all those characters, including Julia, were pivotal in, like, understanding one, the culture in the United States, and two, and British humor, which was fantastic. I learned how to have a really smart ass sense of humor, but Julia, I mean, when people talk about your heroes, unbeknownst to me, she left a big imprint, not only in, you know, us observing her and watching her cook, but the sensibility of it's okay to make mistakes, that kind of stuck
BC: Being a professional chef as you are, and you were saying before, it's boy-centric, it's just ironic how, you know, most of the cooking happens in the home by a woman, and then when it becomes a profession, it's like all dudes, and I went through exactly same thing. I was a line cook when I was 15, and I was like, why? Like, because I started as a waiter, and there were no ladies in the back, and I'm like, why? This is like so fun, and we all cook at home. It's just bizarre. It's definitely challenging, you know. It's definitely testosterone driven still, I feel like.
ID: Do you feel like that's changing at all, or is it still just completely boy-centric?
CZ: You know, I think post-pandemic it was really scary. I opened a restaurant, a hotel property in in 2021. It was like we were still mid-pandemic, technically. Any other restaurant I had built before that, I was about 50% women, 50% men. I had a male sous chef, I had a female sous chef. It was very balanced, and post pandemic, I think the industry hit this kind of speed bump where there was a lot less women willing to put up with a bunch of kind of toxic environments in restaurants, and they found other ways to make a living, and it made me sad, but it was definitely an awakening. I think there are definitely like all the women that are cooking and making kind of rattling the cage and making noise, are incredibly talented, and I hope it changes. I hope it's an upswing back again to where it was before. I say 20 BC, before COVID, but I don't know, I can't say that I'm noticing a crazy shift. If I'm going to be honest.
BC: So we have a few questions that we ask everyone who we talk to. The first one we normally ask everyone is, what is the first food you could think of that brings you right back to your childhood? But I believe you've answered that question a bunch of times, like albondigas and arroz con leche. So we wanted to switch it up with you and say to you, what is your favorite food-related song or music that you like to listen to while you cook?
CZ: Do you remember the movie Mermaids? With Cher?
BC, ID: Yes, yeah, yeah.
CZ: That whole soundtrack. I love it. The scene where she, they're making the, the marshmallow chocolate kebabs. The basic of the sentence is like, “if you want to be happy for the rest of your life”, marry an ugly woman, and it's hilarious, because it's like the Motown 50’s, like dancing, but the lyrics are so twisted, but something about like 50’s Motown, that era of Winona Ryder, of Cher, of Christina Ricci. I listened to that soundtrack. I, it depends. It also depends on my mood. Music is such a big part of my creative process. I've written an entire, I've written a menu listening to 36 Chambers. I listen to like Vicente Fernandez when I'm feeling like I'm an emotional like sufferer. When I'm feeling down, I listen to Vicente Fernandez, like the music that you get drunk with, but I guess it depends on the dinner that I'm doing that require like it calls for a different creative at that point in time, but I really love Cher era, I guess 80’s movies, but place in the 50’s, but that era of music, something about like the doo woppy music gets me happy
ID: I love it too,
CZ: If you listen to it, watch that scene, you can Google, like, if you YouTube it, it is kind of hilarious. The first time it like dawned on me on what the guy was saying, I was like, oh, I'm slightly insulted, and also this is hilarious.
BC: My name is Bernadette, so my, my song, this name, that's named after me, is a Motown song, so I really, really like, have you ever heard Bernadette by the Four Tops?
CZ: Yes, yes, yes.
BC: It's good, and it's happy, and my husband learned all the line, all the lyrics, you better know all those lyrics,
you're married to me.
ID: And there's Bernadette, right, like the Ronettes, Claudette, yeah, we were joking that I could just be Yvette instead of Ivan, and we'll have our own band.
CZ: All the “dettes”. Roy Orbison has a song called Claudette, and I just, someone sent it to me, and I had no idea. So, another ID: great song.
BC: So, the next question that we normally ask people is, since we're the Museum of Food and Drink, what is the drink that you can't go without a single day drinking?
CZ: I drink Legal instant coffee, which is an instant coffee that has caramelized sugar, piloncillo in it. I make it instant coffee, and it's coffee doesn't really, I have ADHD, so it doesn't really keep me up, or it doesn't do anything for me. It's a ritual for me, but this is when I was little. I would go to my, you know, my grandma would be in the kitchen. I would go to my grandma, and she would offer me pan dulce or some sort of bread, and she would make leche con cafe, so a latte, essentially, with instant coffee. So this coffee every morning I can't do without it.
BC: It's funny that you
have it with you when we asked you, because you can't live without
it.
CZ: I can't live without it. Yeah, and Legal is, yeah, that's the brand. I thought it was Nescafe, and then when I saw it, something drew me to it. And then my mom goes,”funny, and your grandma drank that every single day when I was growing up.” So, unbeknownst to me, this is a generational love
BC: That's amazing. And you know, like, where I live now, where I am now, there's a lot of snobbery around coffee, and for some reason, like, instant is looked down upon because it's not, whatever, served to me by a surly Brooklynite, but it, I freaking love instant coffee.
CZ: There's really good instant coffee.
BC: Yeah, I mean, like, actually, a lot of the Nescafe is really good. I'm gonna try the one, your brand, I'm gonna go look for it, but I also always have instant espresso in my house for baking, and I'm sorry, that hits the spot in a different way from my brewed coffee, which I do in a French press. But instant coffee, come on. ID: You gotta give it up for instant coffee. I agree, it's my family is Serbian and Nescafe instant coffee is a staple in Serbia.
CZ: I have every single coffee machine known to man, I have an Aeropress, the Breville, I have a Moka pot, I have the Japanese siphon coffee machine, like I. Yeah, and I still go to this. It’s what makes me happy.
BC: I love that. Oh my gosh, and a lot of it is that childhood, you know, snap
that childhood connection. As far as the third question that we ask people, since our museum exhibition right now is called Street Food City, it's about street food. Mexico is no stranger to street food, but what is your favorite street food right now? Like, right now, if you could go.
CZ: I mean, you can't miss an elote man or the frutero man, the fruit in a cup with chamoy and Tajin, and or my daughter, right now, is currently obsessed with elote en vaso. In the north, we call it elote en vaso, in the south, we call it, or central part of the country, we call it esquites, but that, like, cut corn with mayo, butter, chile, that is our current weekly revisitation. Sometimes we make it at home, and there's a spot in San Diego that does it, so we'll do that too.
BC: Yeah, I just, I was just in LA, actually, and there was a lot of futeros. There are none here. It's kind of weird. Well, I guess maybe because there's more better fruit in California. I mean, that makes sense. What are you gonna do? Apples, actually, that doesn't sound bad, but, but, like, what do you think is missing in the street food scene? That's our fourth question. Like, if you were gonna have a food cart, or what would you like to see out there when you're getting a craving in the street?
CZ: You know, it's funny, because San Diego, being a border town, actually lacks in the street vendors, the street vendor, or capital of like Mexicans really hustling out there. I don't know if it's because we're so close to the border, I don't if it’s a sense of fear. I don't know, really, what the reason is why we don't have street vendors. So, I would just say more street vendors in general. Let's just get the hot dog guy in the corner, like you do in a corner in LA. You know, you walk out of a venue, you're like, hot dog guy, cool.
BC: Well, how awesome work was it for me? Because it was the first time I really looked, you know, how you, when you get an orange car. All of a sudden, everyone has an orange car.
Yeah, so I was always looking at all the street vendors, and the hot dog dudes wrap them in bacon.
CZ: Yeah, it's in a cart on a full sheet pan over a fire, and they're roasting their sautéing peppers and onions, and then the bacon wrapped hot dogs, and it's completely different from like our dirty water dogs here in New York. I was like…
CZ: Well, that's a Sonora dog. It started in Sonora, and we talked about it in the book.
BC: I love that. I love that. So we got to get more of that kind of stuff in San Diego. I wonder what the laws are like. That's something we'll have to look into.
ID: Yeah, I wonder. I wonder why that is, because sometimes street vendors vend in the streets, despite the law, despite not necessarily being quote unquote allowed to, they do it in spite of that, because they need to make a living.
CZ: Yeah.
BC: Well, thanks for answering those questions. And yeah, is there anything else you want to say that maybe we didn't cover today?
CZ: No, you know, I think this book I was talking to every time I talked to someone about it, like I have it here, like this book is mine, and it has like all these post-its on it. I'm doing this like feature of like behind the behind the shot, and I just hope that everyone sees this, and it is by design a very unorthodox Mexican cookbook, where I don't play, you know, the chili, I don't plate the chile relleno the way you would see it, and I don't do every thought, everything the top down, and so I was just, I hope that people see this and see a different version of what Mexican creativity can be. Why there's a header of, you know, a note saying about the pictures of why, why they are a little weird as a Mexican kid that you know had to become a cinephile to really understand American culture. Yeah, that's my takeaway. That the whole love letter to the Borderlands is really for everyone to see themselves in it, not just be for Mexicans, but for every, you know, weird kid living in the seams can feel identified and like also follow that, that you know that itch to be a little different, that it's okay to be different, and it's celebrated in my, in my case it's celebrated, but yeah, I'm excited to have a conversation with Francis about all things borderlands, and to meet you guys, and to actually like spend time inside the museum.
ID: Yes, it's going to be a great event, and it really seems like a book unlike any other, so I can't wait to get my hands on it.
CZ: Thank you.
BC: Same. All right, so we will see you then.
CZ: I'm like super excited.
ID: All right, yes indeed. Thank you so much for taking the time. Take care.
CZ: Bye.
BC: Do you remember in the first podcast episode I mentioned the taco truck over near the F stop in Dumbo? It's called Tacos La Poblanita. Well, I finally got a chance to talk to someone there. One of the folks in the truck, named Araceli, was kind enough to speak with me. She was so sweet. She just started a couple of weeks ago, and despite that, she was willing to chat with me about the truck.
BC: So I'm here today with, ¿como se llama otra vez?
Araceli: Araceli.
BC: Y queremos preguntarle algunas preguntas. Primero, cual es la comida más popular aqui en Tacos La Poblanita?
Araceli: Los tacos de birria, el especial de tacos birria que trae tres tacos y un consomé pequeño. El consomé viene gratis en la compra de tres tacos o la quesabirria. También los tacos: carnitas, bistec, pollo, y nachos.
BC: Wow, nachos? Me sorprende!
Araceli: Tortas, tacos, quesadillas. Quesadillas, es mucho, todo los días.
BC: Turns out the most popular item is the birria taco, which is super trendy right now, as far as tacos are concerned in New York, and her personal favorite is also the birria taco. So she said that tacos in general are super popular, and that also tortas and quesadillas and nachos sell a lot. I've eaten there about four times, and everything I've ever gotten has been tasty and fresh. I got some tacos today for myself. There were al pastor tacos, they were nicely seasoned. The green salsa was good. It came with little chunks of pineapple. They were nice and sweet and salty at the same time, super yummy. I got Ivan an order of vegetable tacos too. They had nopales in them, as well as onions and peppers, and they were fresh. And along with that green salsa they were tasty too, so I definitely would recommend that spot to anyone in the neighborhood here in Dumbo.
BC: Cual es tu comida favorita en el camión?
Araceli: Los tacos de birria.
BC: De birria también. A mi me gustan los del pastor, or tacos al pastor, sí.
BC: I also called Jasar Castillo, who is the owner of the truck, and she gave me a little background about it. They've been open for more than 10 years, starting in Red Hook over at the ball fields at Red Hook Park. They were all lined up there on the weekends for the soccer games, lots of people hanging out, playing, and chatting in Red Hook. Those ball fields have closed. They closed in 2019 for renovations, she said. It's been hard for them to find a new spot that is as busy and successful as the ball fields. They set up in Dumbo, and it has changed a lot since they started selling there. Luckily, it's become more populated with residents, and more visitors have come there every year. So now she really likes
it!
BC: Cuales días viene el camión aquí a Dumbo?
Araceli: Venimos de lunes a sábado en horario de 10am a 5pm.
BC: Gracias por tu tiempo.
Araceli: Ok, gracias a ustedes por probar nuestra comida.
ID: Claudette will appear at MOFAD on June 3 in conversation with editor Francis Lam to discuss Cooking the Borderlands. Purchase tickets mofad.org. Radio Mofad is by Bernadette Cura and Ivan De Luce for the Museum of Food and Drink. Thank you for listening.
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By BernadettecuraThe Museum of Food and Drink
MOFAD
https://www.mofad.org/
Wed June 3, 2026: Claudette Zepeda and Francis Lam in conversation about her upcoming book Cooking the Borderlands
https://mofad.ticketing.veevartapp.com/tickets/view/list/cooking-the-borderlands
https://www.mofad.org/program-detail-page/borderlands
MOFAD Programs
https://www.mofad.org/programs
Claudette Zepeda
https://chefclaudettezepeda.com/
Cooking the Borderlands: Spice and Smoke Between Mexico and the States
https://sites.prh.com/cookingtheborderlands/#preorder-the-book
Tacos La Poblanita
Corner of Jay St and York St
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Mon-Sat 10-5
Jasar Castillo
929-245-3098
Michael Szczerban
https://www.instagram.com/foreverbeard/
The Talisman of Happiness
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/ada-boni/the-talisman-of-happiness/9780316577991/?lens=little-brown-and-company
TRANSCRIPT
Ivan De Luce (ID): Welcome to RadioMOFAD, the podcast from the Museum of Food and Drink. Hey Bernadette, how's it going?
Bernadette Cura (BC): Hey Ivan, it's rainy at the museum today. It's a rainy Saturday. We had quite a good crowd because people love the museum on a rainy day.
ID: They do. I know I do.
BC: Yeah, me too. People do a lot of photoshoots here in Dumbo. I don't know if you knew this. I mean, you know. I don't know if you all know this. People come for their weddings and their quinceañera photo shoots in all their finery and are taking beautiful pictures. There's a whole entourage of people right behind us now taking pictures.
ID: Yeah, there are about four or five five-year-olds running around in dresses and tuxedos chasing each other. We do see that everyday. But yes, we've had a lot of fun at MOFAD lately. We've had some great events.
BC: Yeah, you know, we talked with Michael Szczerban last episode. You were on the Zoom for that event.
ID: Yes, I attended the Talisman of Happiness event with Michael Szczerban over Zoom just to get a different sense of what it's like to attend a MOFAD event. It was great. It was a wonderful talk. Michael Szczerban talked with Deb Perelman from Smitten Kitchen.
BC: Sweet, sweet.
ID: They talked about the 1929 cookbook by Ada Boni called The Talisman of Happiness, and it was a great talk, I mean, we had a great talk with him last episode, but Deb was asking about kind of how the book compares to other books. It's not your typical cookbook in so many ways, not just because of the 12 minestrones that you can choose from in it, out of the 1600 recipes in there, it's a huge book, but also because it's not full of fancy, glossy photos. Cookbooks in the 20s definitely weren't. Michael was comparing it to the Silver Spoon cookbook, which many of us are familiar with.
BC: Yes
ID: It's a beautiful book, much like the fancy Silver Spoon that sits in the kitchen, and maybe isn't touched every day, whereas Michael sort of compared it to Nonna's worn wooden spoon that's been in the sauce all day on a Sunday, chipped and worn, but full of love, and has made so many things, and is used every single day.
BC: Well, I know that for me, as far as like The Joy of Cooking, which is what it was compared to a lot. I definitely use that book a lot, and there's no room for pictures. You want the words, you want the solid recipes.
ID: Yes, and Michael had said that he wanted it to stick to 1000 pages and not go beyond that.
Well, I think I'd rather, for a book like that, that's really useful in the kitchen, I'd rather not have pictures, and like we talked about in the podcast, that illustrations are really additional information that's helpful, and they're really cute. So I'm glad, I'm glad they stuck to that formula,
and I cannot wait to get this book. I get excited about all our cookbooks that we have in the museum, but this one seems really special.
BC: Definitely. So, as far as events, that one was great, and we have more coming up.
ID: In June, we'll see Claudette Zepeda and her new book, Cooking the Borderlands.
BC: Yes, she grew up in San Diego, and also in Tijuana. So, the foods that she grew up with, she's going to talk about it. What are the elements and the ingredients and the influences that came together to make that very special cuisine there, where she's from? And we're excited to host her here. And you know, I'm from Fort Worth, Texas, and there's Tex Mex cuisine there, and I'm wondering, like, what the similarities might be, since it's Mexican American, so I'm curious about that, and I think you told me, Ivan, that you're not that well-versed in Mexican food to begin with, so there's a whole world for you to discover
ID: When it comes to Mexican food, I know Mexican food in New York really well, and I love it, but when I meet people from California, they say you gotta have California Mexican food, it's totally different, and it sounds like this border area, you know, between Tijuana, San Diego, and these other towns there have some kind of distinct thing going on, like a lot of regions do, and I would imagine that the Texas Tex-Mex thing is super different as well.
BC: Definitely, definitely. And that's what's so great about regionalism in cuisine, is that we do have things in common, but they're also unique. So I'm excited to discover all that when she's here and during our talk with her on the podcast,
ID: Yes, let's take a listen to that interview with Claudette.
ID: Welcome to Radio Mofad, the podcast from the Museum of Food and Drink. Chef and author Claudette Zepeda grew up on both sides of the California-Mexico border, a first-generation. Mexican American, where the mixing of vibrant culinary traditions informed her food. Claudette has served as executive chef at El Jardin, appeared on Top Chef as well as Iron Chef Mexico, and now has a new cookbook, Cooking the Borderlands: Spice and Smoke Between Mexico and the States. Claudette will appear at MOFAD on June 3 in conversation with editor Francis Lam to discuss borderlands culture, migration, and the stories behind the recipes that shaped Claudette's life growing up between Mexico and the US
ID: So your new book, Cooking the Borderlands, centers around the mixing of these cultures that you grew up with, you know, between California and Mexico. It's a unique blend of cultures in this particular area, and I guess I was wondering what you love most about this kind of food.
Claudette Zepeda (CZ): I love that there's, you know, on the border, I should say, as a chef, especially cooking Mexican food in the United States, people always want to put us in a box of, like, well, where's this from, and where's that from, and you know, is this tradition to use words like traditional or authentic Mexican food? It's hard to receive when you're a creative and you just want to create, and as a border kid, and that sensibility that I learned because of being on the border and living with one foot in both countries, I learned that the sensibility of the food in the borderlands has no borders. It does not answer to whoever set the barrier of does it go this way or that way. Food is so fluid, as a border kid, because I mean, the book trespasses the entire border, from San Diego, Tijuana to Tamaulipas in Texas. The dichotomy doesn't change between any of those regions, it changes geographically, and the food changes, but the sensibility is the same. I was like, we don't care what barriers you put up, food doesn't answer to those.
BC: Yeah, that's a tricky question to answer, and kind of annoying, like, what is traditional? Because I'm from the Philippines, I know what my parents cooked, and it has a lot of elements of traditional, but it also has a lot of elements of, like, what you can get in Fort Worth, Texas, as a Filipina,
CZ: Yeah
BC: you know, like, and it wasn't a lot, so it creates its own authenticity, and I think, as Americans, we have to go through that a lot in different parts of the country. People want that authenticity, and I, a lot of it, I'm not sure, has to do with being PC. Is that true? I mean, I don’t know.
CZ: I think a lot of it has to do with their most people are uncomfortable in the, in the uncomfortable, so they think to they need something safe, and I hate the word approachable, but they need you to be palatable, Right, and I feel like sometimes I'm just like, just let me be weird, authenticity is very personal, and tradition, you could have one neighborhood block in Mexico, everyone's making albondigas, and every single one will taste different, because every single family has their own traditions, and they're not static.
BC: Yeah, I love that. Let me be weird. You want me to be weird! I promise it's gonna taste better.
CZ: Exactly, and I'm also not an 80-year-old grandmother cooking over wood fire, and like, with you know, I would love that one day. I want that, but currently that's not where I'm at.
BC: Oh man, yeah.
ID: And Bernadette, you said Fort Worth, Texas. I mean, that's Tex-Mex food that you were kind of growing up having as well, right?
BC: Well, yeah, and I really, I'm not really sure about, like, what the roots specifically of Tex-Mex are, but I know there's a lot of that ranch cuisine in Texas food because of the beef industry, and you mentioned that earlier. I wonder if they have, if there's anything similar there, but no, it really is much different from the stuff in San Diego and Tijuana.
CZ: Yeah, and you mean Texas all the way to El Paso, you have the Chihuahua border, you have the Nogales, you have Juarez, you have all these...I mean,Texas is a huge state, so within that one state, and you have the Native Americans that live, you know, the Tarahumara people, the Rarámuri that are on the other side in Mexico, on the Sierra Nevadas, and the Sierra Madre is like that, is very different climate, very different adaptability that those first people have had to really familiarize themselves with the land. But also do without a lot, you know, like how do you feed a family with very little resources? And sometimes like the climate is really uninhabitable to a lot of people, but they, that's their, what they know, and what they're raised in. So 1000’s of years of generations.
BC: Where you were in Tijuana and San Diego, what were the products like?
CZ: Well I'm so spoiled, you know, fortunate enough to travel to six of the seven continents cooking food. Making tortillas in the craziest corners of the world, but I am always very hesitant to, like, send - you got to send an ingredient list when you're going to go cook somewhere, and I try to take to remove my San Diego, California, Southern California chip from my brain, because I understand how spoiled we are. Everything grows here, it's, you know, the 76 and sunny is a true statement. There's pockets of not 76 and sunny, but I'm also on the border, so if I need a Mexican ingredient, I cross from five minutes, I'm in Tijuana and atthe Mercado, and then I cross another five minutes with Global Entry. So I understand that my circumstances are unique as a border human being, and Tijuana, being where I grew up, it's very familiar to me. I don't see it as going to another country, I see it as the
“other side” is what we called it growing up, but I do have ingredients from all of the Republic of the entire country of Mexico end up in Tijuana because most people migrated to Tijuana.
ID: And speaking of that sort of exchange of ingredients, your book starts by mentioning the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the drawing of the border between the US and Mexico, you know, at times following geographic features like rivers, and at times just an arbitrary straight line, you know, and then you talk about San Diego today, where you have access to pretty much whatever you need. How was that exchange of ingredients back then versus today? You know, what did that look like?
CZ: Well, I mean, I can't speak to the chefs in the 1800’s and how they were cooking, but I can speak to the sensibility that Tijuanenses have, and I think it's more - it's more on the mindset and the way we think about food in Tijuana - is everything's welcome at our table. I don't think there's any country that can say that doesn't have some sort of ugly past and ugly history, and we have it. There's, you know, racism that is really prevalent to this day in Mexico, but no matter what, Tijuana has become home to so many different human beings and accents and cultures that it changed the landscape of the culinary quilt of that is Tijuana, and for I mean, I just see it as like the ingredients that were in my pantry were not different. They weren't quote unquote different, and or weird, but I had, you know, soy sauce, and I had a lot of Asian ingredients, which Chinese and Japanese cultures that are, you know, really prevalent in Baja. Those were always in my, in my pantry, and going out to Chinese food every Sunday was not weird, and my dad emigrated to the states in the 60’s, so he had a little bit more of a gourmand’s, so to speak, palate, because he, you know, was able to go out and eat in restaurants in LA that weren't, you know, available in Tijuana, or in Mexico, or in Jalisco, where he's from, so I think overall Tijuana, Tijuanenses have a sort of fluidity to them, nothing's a big deal, everything is figure-outable, and it's like, oh, you don't have this either,
you have this, you know, it's like, oh, I don't have salt, but I have soy sauce, and you know, it's adapting and overcoming over every single obstacle, because the entire city of Tijuana was built on, now especially, built on people that wanted to follow the pursuit of the American dream, and then couldn't, and had to land in Tijuana and make it their home. So it had the resilience of Tijuanenses, it’s very special, and that translates to starting as a ranch, Rancho Tijuana, to what Tijuana Baja California is today. I mean, it's the promise land for a lot of young, talented chefs, even in San Diego, that they can't open a restaurant here, so they go to Tijuana, and they’re earning Michelin stars. It is such a foundational, pivotal well of creativity. I mean, and we, I feel like we all love it in that way.
BC: I had no idea that Tijuana was like that. I can't wait to check it out the next time I'm over there.
CZ: The media does a really shitty job (Sorry, pardon my French) does a really sad job painting it as, villainizing the border. And as someone who's lived here my whole life, there's a lot of pretty and beautiful things about it too.
BC: Well, just getting back to the book a little bit, your second chapter talks about matriarchs. How did the matriarchs in your family influence you to become a cook? How did they influence who you are growing up also?
CZ: It was really important for me, you know, as I was talking to Francis about what, how the book was going to shape up, the original 100 recipes that I've written down, kind of. I mean, I would say maybe half of them made it, half of them changed, and the biggest part was like the “cooking off my matriarch’s hips” was because as a child I was the only girl in a house full of boys, go figure, I picked the most like boy-centric career, but it's it. Was understanding, like, the role of nurturing. It was really bestowed on me by my matriarchs, and because my family, on both my mom's side and my dad's side, are from Nayaritan Jalisco, both of them, and understanding that Tijuanenses, most of them migrated to Tijuana, because it was not - it was a ranch that everyone went to for vacations, those were casinos, where it wasn't a place where a lot of people lived, and my matriarchs, my mother, my grandmother, my mom had 16 kids, and they were all born in different parts of Mexico, and as she was going to the different states, because of where work was available for her and my grandfather, they would pick up dishes from the regional, you know, Mexico has seven regions of cuisine. Every region has multiple states, multiple cities, and a lot of dishes in them. She started collecting these dishes, so by the time she got to Tijuana, and she was raising her grandchildren, we grew up eating chongos zamoranos from Zamora Michoacán, we grew up eating sopa de lima from Yucatan, we grew up eating birria, because we're from Jalisco, but it was all these flavors that I was really spoiled to have, and not every family did that, you know, that some people never leave their pocket and then migrate, so all they know is, you know, Sonorense food, or all they know is that region, and my family, since they were a little nomadic by me, by socioeconomics, it really, I needed to talk about those recipes, because they might start from somewhere else, but they taste different, and they tasted different to me.
BC: So, when you were talking about your dad being a gourmand and being somewhere where he could enjoy a lot of food, your mom also enjoyed a lot of food because of her work and how she had to move around, and that's why you're traveling the globe and exploring, that's really interesting stuff.
CZ: Yeah, I was, I was, have a gypsy soul, and I obviously it has a little to do with my family, but my mom learned how to cook when she met my dad. Funny enough, because my mother did all the cooking, my mom, by watching PBS, because again he had been living in the country for 20 years, he gifted her, and when they met in Tijuana, The Joy of Cooking, and a couple of Julia Child's volumes of her cookbooks. So I remember growing up, my house, my kitchen was a nightmare. It was just like I remember a pressure cooker exploding, but the magazines, and like, the thoughts of my mom trying to please my dad, and being like, oh, I made this, and I made that, and him having a craving, and her going, “Shit, how am I going to do this?” Okay, and so she learned, and we were the benefactors of that learning process.
ID: It's so interesting, you've got all these great influences, you know, Julia Child included, like that kind of influencing your childhood, you know, before you even realized it.
CZ: Oh yeah, she taught us how to speak English. We're ESL, we were only speaking Spanish, and all my life we only spoke Spanish at home, and PBS is how we watched, you know, Sesame Street, all the BBC shows, Are You Being Served, Mr. Bean, all those characters, including Julia, were pivotal in, like, understanding one, the culture in the United States, and two, and British humor, which was fantastic. I learned how to have a really smart ass sense of humor, but Julia, I mean, when people talk about your heroes, unbeknownst to me, she left a big imprint, not only in, you know, us observing her and watching her cook, but the sensibility of it's okay to make mistakes, that kind of stuck
BC: Being a professional chef as you are, and you were saying before, it's boy-centric, it's just ironic how, you know, most of the cooking happens in the home by a woman, and then when it becomes a profession, it's like all dudes, and I went through exactly same thing. I was a line cook when I was 15, and I was like, why? Like, because I started as a waiter, and there were no ladies in the back, and I'm like, why? This is like so fun, and we all cook at home. It's just bizarre. It's definitely challenging, you know. It's definitely testosterone driven still, I feel like.
ID: Do you feel like that's changing at all, or is it still just completely boy-centric?
CZ: You know, I think post-pandemic it was really scary. I opened a restaurant, a hotel property in in 2021. It was like we were still mid-pandemic, technically. Any other restaurant I had built before that, I was about 50% women, 50% men. I had a male sous chef, I had a female sous chef. It was very balanced, and post pandemic, I think the industry hit this kind of speed bump where there was a lot less women willing to put up with a bunch of kind of toxic environments in restaurants, and they found other ways to make a living, and it made me sad, but it was definitely an awakening. I think there are definitely like all the women that are cooking and making kind of rattling the cage and making noise, are incredibly talented, and I hope it changes. I hope it's an upswing back again to where it was before. I say 20 BC, before COVID, but I don't know, I can't say that I'm noticing a crazy shift. If I'm going to be honest.
BC: So we have a few questions that we ask everyone who we talk to. The first one we normally ask everyone is, what is the first food you could think of that brings you right back to your childhood? But I believe you've answered that question a bunch of times, like albondigas and arroz con leche. So we wanted to switch it up with you and say to you, what is your favorite food-related song or music that you like to listen to while you cook?
CZ: Do you remember the movie Mermaids? With Cher?
BC, ID: Yes, yeah, yeah.
CZ: That whole soundtrack. I love it. The scene where she, they're making the, the marshmallow chocolate kebabs. The basic of the sentence is like, “if you want to be happy for the rest of your life”, marry an ugly woman, and it's hilarious, because it's like the Motown 50’s, like dancing, but the lyrics are so twisted, but something about like 50’s Motown, that era of Winona Ryder, of Cher, of Christina Ricci. I listened to that soundtrack. I, it depends. It also depends on my mood. Music is such a big part of my creative process. I've written an entire, I've written a menu listening to 36 Chambers. I listen to like Vicente Fernandez when I'm feeling like I'm an emotional like sufferer. When I'm feeling down, I listen to Vicente Fernandez, like the music that you get drunk with, but I guess it depends on the dinner that I'm doing that require like it calls for a different creative at that point in time, but I really love Cher era, I guess 80’s movies, but place in the 50’s, but that era of music, something about like the doo woppy music gets me happy
ID: I love it too,
CZ: If you listen to it, watch that scene, you can Google, like, if you YouTube it, it is kind of hilarious. The first time it like dawned on me on what the guy was saying, I was like, oh, I'm slightly insulted, and also this is hilarious.
BC: My name is Bernadette, so my, my song, this name, that's named after me, is a Motown song, so I really, really like, have you ever heard Bernadette by the Four Tops?
CZ: Yes, yes, yes.
BC: It's good, and it's happy, and my husband learned all the line, all the lyrics, you better know all those lyrics,
you're married to me.
ID: And there's Bernadette, right, like the Ronettes, Claudette, yeah, we were joking that I could just be Yvette instead of Ivan, and we'll have our own band.
CZ: All the “dettes”. Roy Orbison has a song called Claudette, and I just, someone sent it to me, and I had no idea. So, another ID: great song.
BC: So, the next question that we normally ask people is, since we're the Museum of Food and Drink, what is the drink that you can't go without a single day drinking?
CZ: I drink Legal instant coffee, which is an instant coffee that has caramelized sugar, piloncillo in it. I make it instant coffee, and it's coffee doesn't really, I have ADHD, so it doesn't really keep me up, or it doesn't do anything for me. It's a ritual for me, but this is when I was little. I would go to my, you know, my grandma would be in the kitchen. I would go to my grandma, and she would offer me pan dulce or some sort of bread, and she would make leche con cafe, so a latte, essentially, with instant coffee. So this coffee every morning I can't do without it.
BC: It's funny that you
have it with you when we asked you, because you can't live without
it.
CZ: I can't live without it. Yeah, and Legal is, yeah, that's the brand. I thought it was Nescafe, and then when I saw it, something drew me to it. And then my mom goes,”funny, and your grandma drank that every single day when I was growing up.” So, unbeknownst to me, this is a generational love
BC: That's amazing. And you know, like, where I live now, where I am now, there's a lot of snobbery around coffee, and for some reason, like, instant is looked down upon because it's not, whatever, served to me by a surly Brooklynite, but it, I freaking love instant coffee.
CZ: There's really good instant coffee.
BC: Yeah, I mean, like, actually, a lot of the Nescafe is really good. I'm gonna try the one, your brand, I'm gonna go look for it, but I also always have instant espresso in my house for baking, and I'm sorry, that hits the spot in a different way from my brewed coffee, which I do in a French press. But instant coffee, come on. ID: You gotta give it up for instant coffee. I agree, it's my family is Serbian and Nescafe instant coffee is a staple in Serbia.
CZ: I have every single coffee machine known to man, I have an Aeropress, the Breville, I have a Moka pot, I have the Japanese siphon coffee machine, like I. Yeah, and I still go to this. It’s what makes me happy.
BC: I love that. Oh my gosh, and a lot of it is that childhood, you know, snap
that childhood connection. As far as the third question that we ask people, since our museum exhibition right now is called Street Food City, it's about street food. Mexico is no stranger to street food, but what is your favorite street food right now? Like, right now, if you could go.
CZ: I mean, you can't miss an elote man or the frutero man, the fruit in a cup with chamoy and Tajin, and or my daughter, right now, is currently obsessed with elote en vaso. In the north, we call it elote en vaso, in the south, we call it, or central part of the country, we call it esquites, but that, like, cut corn with mayo, butter, chile, that is our current weekly revisitation. Sometimes we make it at home, and there's a spot in San Diego that does it, so we'll do that too.
BC: Yeah, I just, I was just in LA, actually, and there was a lot of futeros. There are none here. It's kind of weird. Well, I guess maybe because there's more better fruit in California. I mean, that makes sense. What are you gonna do? Apples, actually, that doesn't sound bad, but, but, like, what do you think is missing in the street food scene? That's our fourth question. Like, if you were gonna have a food cart, or what would you like to see out there when you're getting a craving in the street?
CZ: You know, it's funny, because San Diego, being a border town, actually lacks in the street vendors, the street vendor, or capital of like Mexicans really hustling out there. I don't know if it's because we're so close to the border, I don't if it’s a sense of fear. I don't know, really, what the reason is why we don't have street vendors. So, I would just say more street vendors in general. Let's just get the hot dog guy in the corner, like you do in a corner in LA. You know, you walk out of a venue, you're like, hot dog guy, cool.
BC: Well, how awesome work was it for me? Because it was the first time I really looked, you know, how you, when you get an orange car. All of a sudden, everyone has an orange car.
Yeah, so I was always looking at all the street vendors, and the hot dog dudes wrap them in bacon.
CZ: Yeah, it's in a cart on a full sheet pan over a fire, and they're roasting their sautéing peppers and onions, and then the bacon wrapped hot dogs, and it's completely different from like our dirty water dogs here in New York. I was like…
CZ: Well, that's a Sonora dog. It started in Sonora, and we talked about it in the book.
BC: I love that. I love that. So we got to get more of that kind of stuff in San Diego. I wonder what the laws are like. That's something we'll have to look into.
ID: Yeah, I wonder. I wonder why that is, because sometimes street vendors vend in the streets, despite the law, despite not necessarily being quote unquote allowed to, they do it in spite of that, because they need to make a living.
CZ: Yeah.
BC: Well, thanks for answering those questions. And yeah, is there anything else you want to say that maybe we didn't cover today?
CZ: No, you know, I think this book I was talking to every time I talked to someone about it, like I have it here, like this book is mine, and it has like all these post-its on it. I'm doing this like feature of like behind the behind the shot, and I just hope that everyone sees this, and it is by design a very unorthodox Mexican cookbook, where I don't play, you know, the chili, I don't plate the chile relleno the way you would see it, and I don't do every thought, everything the top down, and so I was just, I hope that people see this and see a different version of what Mexican creativity can be. Why there's a header of, you know, a note saying about the pictures of why, why they are a little weird as a Mexican kid that you know had to become a cinephile to really understand American culture. Yeah, that's my takeaway. That the whole love letter to the Borderlands is really for everyone to see themselves in it, not just be for Mexicans, but for every, you know, weird kid living in the seams can feel identified and like also follow that, that you know that itch to be a little different, that it's okay to be different, and it's celebrated in my, in my case it's celebrated, but yeah, I'm excited to have a conversation with Francis about all things borderlands, and to meet you guys, and to actually like spend time inside the museum.
ID: Yes, it's going to be a great event, and it really seems like a book unlike any other, so I can't wait to get my hands on it.
CZ: Thank you.
BC: Same. All right, so we will see you then.
CZ: I'm like super excited.
ID: All right, yes indeed. Thank you so much for taking the time. Take care.
CZ: Bye.
BC: Do you remember in the first podcast episode I mentioned the taco truck over near the F stop in Dumbo? It's called Tacos La Poblanita. Well, I finally got a chance to talk to someone there. One of the folks in the truck, named Araceli, was kind enough to speak with me. She was so sweet. She just started a couple of weeks ago, and despite that, she was willing to chat with me about the truck.
BC: So I'm here today with, ¿como se llama otra vez?
Araceli: Araceli.
BC: Y queremos preguntarle algunas preguntas. Primero, cual es la comida más popular aqui en Tacos La Poblanita?
Araceli: Los tacos de birria, el especial de tacos birria que trae tres tacos y un consomé pequeño. El consomé viene gratis en la compra de tres tacos o la quesabirria. También los tacos: carnitas, bistec, pollo, y nachos.
BC: Wow, nachos? Me sorprende!
Araceli: Tortas, tacos, quesadillas. Quesadillas, es mucho, todo los días.
BC: Turns out the most popular item is the birria taco, which is super trendy right now, as far as tacos are concerned in New York, and her personal favorite is also the birria taco. So she said that tacos in general are super popular, and that also tortas and quesadillas and nachos sell a lot. I've eaten there about four times, and everything I've ever gotten has been tasty and fresh. I got some tacos today for myself. There were al pastor tacos, they were nicely seasoned. The green salsa was good. It came with little chunks of pineapple. They were nice and sweet and salty at the same time, super yummy. I got Ivan an order of vegetable tacos too. They had nopales in them, as well as onions and peppers, and they were fresh. And along with that green salsa they were tasty too, so I definitely would recommend that spot to anyone in the neighborhood here in Dumbo.
BC: Cual es tu comida favorita en el camión?
Araceli: Los tacos de birria.
BC: De birria también. A mi me gustan los del pastor, or tacos al pastor, sí.
BC: I also called Jasar Castillo, who is the owner of the truck, and she gave me a little background about it. They've been open for more than 10 years, starting in Red Hook over at the ball fields at Red Hook Park. They were all lined up there on the weekends for the soccer games, lots of people hanging out, playing, and chatting in Red Hook. Those ball fields have closed. They closed in 2019 for renovations, she said. It's been hard for them to find a new spot that is as busy and successful as the ball fields. They set up in Dumbo, and it has changed a lot since they started selling there. Luckily, it's become more populated with residents, and more visitors have come there every year. So now she really likes
it!
BC: Cuales días viene el camión aquí a Dumbo?
Araceli: Venimos de lunes a sábado en horario de 10am a 5pm.
BC: Gracias por tu tiempo.
Araceli: Ok, gracias a ustedes por probar nuestra comida.
ID: Claudette will appear at MOFAD on June 3 in conversation with editor Francis Lam to discuss Cooking the Borderlands. Purchase tickets mofad.org. Radio Mofad is by Bernadette Cura and Ivan De Luce for the Museum of Food and Drink. Thank you for listening.