The Ultimate Dish
The Ultimate Dish
How Claudette Zepeda Rewrote the Rules—From Single Mom to Entrepreneur
In today’s episode, we chat with Claudette Zepeda, award-winning chef, culinary entrepreneur, and Creative Director of Chispa Hospitality, known for her fearless approach to regional Mexican cuisine and globally inspired storytelling.
Claudette shares the creative vision behind her newest restaurant, Leu Leu. She reflects on growing up near the U.S.–Mexico border, how her travels have shaped her culinary identity, and the influence of fashion and music in her work. She also discusses her social impact initiative Viva La Vida, her journey as a single mom, and the deliberate choices that set her apart, including why she’s resisted putting tacos on any menu.
Join us as Claudette reflects on her path from home kitchens to international acclaim—and how she continues cooking without borders, labels, or limits.
TRANSCRIPT
Kirk Bachmann: Hi everyone, my name is Kirk Bachmann, and welcome back to The Ultimate Dish. Today, we’re honored to have Claudette Zepeda — an award-winning chef, culinary entrepreneur, and celebrated culinary anthropologist known for her fearless approach to regional Mexican cuisine.
With over 20 years of experience in restaurant kitchens and extensive travels throughout Mexico and the world, Claudette has developed a vast knowledge of indigenous ingredients and cross-cultural cuisine.
As the Founder and Creative Director of Chispa Hospitality, she oversees innovative food concepts in San Diego, Nashville, Australia, and Mexico.
Her newest restaurant, Leu Leu, is a love letter to San Diego, blending global flavors with the region’s beach bungalow culture.
Claudette has received national acclaim with glowing reviews from “The New York Times,” inclusion on “Esquire’s” Best New Restaurants list in both 2018 and 2021, and recognition on the Michelin Bib Gourmand list.
She was named “Eater San Diego” and “San Diego Union-Tribune’s” Chef of the Year in 2018 and was a James Beard Best Chef West semifinalist in 2019.
You may also recognize her from her many television appearances, including “Top Chef Season 15” and “Top Chef Mexico Season 2,” “Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend,” “Iron Chef Mexico,” “Bobby’s Triple Threat,” and as a guest chef on “Selena + Chef: Christmas Special.”
Beyond the kitchen, Claudette is a champion for social impact. Through her initiative, Viva La Vida, she helps Mexican women establish micro-businesses to support their families, and in 2024, she expanded her mission with a fund to help Hispanic women break free from generational poverty in the U.S.
Get ready for an inspiring conversation about culinary innovation, cultural storytelling, and making a difference through food.
And there she is. Good morning, good morning, good morning!
Claudette Zepeda: Good morning.
Kirk Bachmann: What an intro! Can I just catch my breath there for a moment. My Lord!
Claudette Zepeda: I know, I want to go into my shirt.
Kirk Bachmann: Sometimes it’s hard not to get somewhat emotional – and I probably read the intro twenty times – the impact of how much you’re doing, and how much you’ve done, and how much you’re probably going to do is really amazing. We’ll dive into that. We have a little bit of a connection with San Diego and San Diego State University as my sister attended there.
But first, I have to comment on the studio, the cooking studio where you’re sitting, which is very unique to our show. I see a coffee maker, super important.
Claudette Zepeda: The lifeline.
Kirk Bachmann: Yeah, it should be an IV.
Claudette Zepeda: This is the defibrillator for chefs.
Kirk Bachmann: This is going to be fun! I’ve had three lattes, too, so I’m off and running. It’s a little blurry. Tell me what books you have over your shoulder.
Claudette Zepeda: I have “Ottolenghi Comfort.” I was blessed with the ability to emcee him when he came into San Diego. We went to the Spreckels Theatre and I did his whole book tour here in San Diego.
Kirk Bachmann: Wow! Wow!
Claudette Zepeda: That was huge, so I have “Ottolenghi” with all of my notes. I’m a huge note-taker nerd, so all of these Post-Its…
Kirk Bachmann: My teachers would love you.
Claudette Zepeda: The flashcards laminated. I’m a nerd.
Kirk Bachmann: That is so great.
Claudette Zepeda: I have Carolina Gelen’s “Pass the Plate.” I have Nini Nguyen “Dac Biet” Kushbu Shah “Amrikan.”
Kirk Bachmann: Always learning, right? The teacher is always learning.
Claudette Zepeda: Yes.
Mother’s Day at Leu Leu
Kirk Bachmann: Absolutely love that. Love that. We have so much to talk about today, Chef. Our producer, Noelle, lives in San Diego, so we had to have you on the show. She went to Leu Leu just a few months ago and continues to talk about her experience. As I troll your Instagram site, it looks like you had a real nice turnout for Mother’s Day, which can arguably be the busiest, craziest day in the restaurant business. How did it go? Pre-fixed dinner, right?
Claudette Zepeda: It was a pre-fixed dinner, and it was a dinner. I think you can attest to the fact that chefs, we have a little PTSD when it comes to Easter brunch and Mother’s Day brunch.
Kirk Bachmann: A little.
Claudette Zepeda: I’ve had walk-ins fail the night before Mother’s Day brunch.
Kirk Bachmann: Of course!
Claudette Zepeda: At Leu Leu, we have a micro-kitchen. It’s no gas; induction only. I have four induction burners and one Rational combi oven, a half-sheet tray combi oven. We’re already on an uphill swing when we do anything of that scale.
So I thought, You know what? #fbrunch. I don’t want to do brunch, but what if we did dinner and we celebrated women? Because as a woman – and I have a lot of really close girlfriends – Mother’s Day is a hard day. Some of us don’t have amazing relationships with motherhood or our mothers. We took a different approach with Leu Leu and said, “How about we celebrate the divine feminine and celebrate all women? And make a menu that is a little cheeky and kind of traverses all the globe and its flavors, but always landing in the rootedness of me, which is Mexico. The third course was two different moles; it was one with roses and one with star anise Chinese five-spice spice blend.
It was amazing. We had ninety covers, which again, for a restaurant that has no walk-in, a three-door refrigerator, and an expo-line with a low-boy – we have one low-boy and one sandwich shop, that’s it – running two menus. Essentially, Saturday we ran our regular menu with thirteen items on it, and then Sunday, we did Mother’s Day with whole new dishes. It is a miracle what we’ve been able to do at Leu Leu.
It was beautiful to see. We had a beautiful chocolate and dessert table that everyone just attacked. It was really comical. Women – everyone wants to call us demure – but if you saw that chocolate table at the end? I was like, “What happened?” It’s been attacked.
Kirk Bachmann: You know what I get so excited about? It is just so fun to chat with a chef because the language – low-boy, covers – I absolutely love it. Listen, ninety covers is a lot for any night, whether it’s three-course, five-course, six-course. It’s a lot of people coming on a very special day.
I have to ask. We had Gavin Kaysen on the show some time ago, and I followed him for a long, long time. I really got enamored with him during the pandemic when he came into your living room and into your kitchen with his family, and he was really transparent and genuine. I see you guys on social media. Can you talk about that relationship a little bit? How did you guys get together?
Claudette Zepeda: Gavin came into my life in 2006, I want to say.
Kirk Bachmann: Oh wow!
Gavin Kaysen – Good People
Claudette Zepeda: Yeah. We’ve known each other for a very long time. I was a pastry cook in La Jolla while he was doing his road to Bocuse. I think he was 2004, something like that. 2005. San Diego really rose up on the occasion to support him on his road to the Bocuse. We raised money, we did dinners, we did all that stuff. I didn’t really know much about him except there was this young kid – he was 27 at the time – that was going to go to France and represent the U.S. The rest is history on that road for him.
Shortly after he got back, he needed a pastry chef. I was six months into being a pastry cook. My pastry chef that I was working for at the time was a complete tyrant. I was very, very, very, very [run] ragged. He said, “You know what? I think you should go work for Gavin. I think you’re ready.”
I was like, “I’m not ready. I’m not ready.”
He said, “Gavin is going to be the leader you need.” He basically set me free, which was amazing, because I needed to get out of that kitchen.
I walked into Gavin’s kitchen [as] a little bit of a doe-eyed kid, 22 years old, with two kids at that time. Unbeknownst to me, it was exactly what I needed to learn in leadership styles. The rest is history as far as our friendship is concerned. He is my lifeline. I text him; within ten seconds, he texts me back. His birthday is on Mexican Mother’s Day, so I text him on Mother’s Day, and I tell him, “Happy Mother’s Day! Happy Birthday!” He texts me on Father’s Day. He’s just good people.
Kirk Bachmann: That’s just great. That’s such a beautiful story; thanks for sharing that. Ironically, the story continues. Just last week, we had Stefani De Palma on the show. She was the latest, greatest over at Bocuse. I know that competition has been going on for many years. You almost have to argue that Gavin’s involvement – Thomas Keller and all – really took it to another level.
Claudette Zepeda: Daniel [Boulud] asked him, “Do you want to go again?” He said, “No, but I want to start a foundation to help other American chefs win.”
Culture Cooking Club
Kirk Bachmann: Just beautiful. This isn’t on the script, so I’m going to throw you all kinds of kudos. I mentioned this briefly when we got going, but we try to do as much research as we can. Celebrities like you we know about, but we like to dig in a little bit. I was just obsessed, because we do some online teaching as well at Escoffier, but I want those who are listening to go to ChefClaudetteZepeda.com/cooking club and check out this cooking club. I’d love for you to repeat what you told me earlier.
Basically, you have these beautiful recipes, and you have the ability to grab one, and sign up for it. Then you get the actual recipes via email, and you get videos of you walking us through that. What I’m fascinated by, like I told you earlier, sometimes in the kitchens of a culinary school, the content comes very fast. Not everyone is courageous enough to say, “Oh, could you repeat that? I didn’t quite get that,” so this idea of pausing so that you can better understand is fascinating. Would you mind reminding our listeners how the Culture Cooking Club came to be? I just love it. I absolutely love it.
Claudette Zepeda: Yeah. The name comes from Boy George. I love it.
Kirk Bachmann: No way! No way! That’s my generation. Yes.
Claudette Zepeda: I grew up in the punk movement, the 80s rock. I love it. That was the inspiration for the name. Basically, I missed human interaction during the pandemic, and I wanted to teach people how approachable Mexican cuisine really could be. If you had someone who made you feel safe, one in your personal home environment, but two, to ask the questions and to interrupt the class because it was completely allowed.
They are long-formatted videos. It’s an hour and a half to two hours on some of them. I teach multiple recipes. In one cooking class, you can get three or four. Perception of value is important to me. I didn’t want people to be like, “That’s how much it costs for one?” So I said, “You know what? Let’s just do a full dinner. So the albondigas ones that we were talking about earlier, albondigas al chipotle, it’s literally my mother’s recipe.
I walk everyone through it. Anyone who has any sort of hesitance, I only allow about twenty people per class. I can see it in their eyes when they want to ask a question. I would stop the class. I would say, “You. I need to see your bowl. Let me see your bowl.” We would go to that interaction.
Kirk Bachmann: No pressure. Yeah.
Claudette Zepeda: But if that person had a question, nine out of ten times other people do as well. They are all just going, “I hope I make it.” Or they give up because I’m going too fast. It was beautiful.
I have friends now that I had never met before, and now they follow me on social media. They were on at every single class. I can never underestimate the power of humanity and connection when it comes to food. It’s crazy.
No Limitations
Kirk Bachmann: So well said. And the power of the classroom, too. We call what you’re doing in many ways “flipping the classroom.” You’re not talking at students; you’re talking with students. You’re pausing, and you’re allowing them to find their voices so they can ask the question that helps them proceed. Really well done. I love it.
Speaking of love, we have to talk about the new culinary adventure, we call it. Leu Leu. A quote that I read from “San Diego Magazine” – and I love this idea of a 1930s bungalow. I’m thinking of black and white movies. Just so, so chill. In that article, it says, and I quote: “The Leu Leu food is anchored in her Mexican-American roots, but it’s also Mediterranean and Moroccan, Eastern, and whatever the heck, because that’s how chefs cook for their friends.” Unbelievable statement. Tell me about that.
Claudette Zepeda: Leu Leu is really special. Leu Leu, my partners and I talk about “her,” like you would a chef. A ship is considered a “her” – or a car. Restaurants to me are very, very feminine in their way because they’re hospitable. It’s a warm environment. It’s where you go to get your nutritional sustenance. In many ways, she is the womb. She is the mother.
So Leu Leu is this human being in our mind, in our creative flow. “What would Leu Leu’s living room feel like? What would Leu Leu cook for her friends?” She was this party girl. I kind of see this Gidget, Brigitte Bardot, sexy, bodacious babe that is a surfer but has the most eclectic human beings as friends.
That particular space used to be a roadside motel in the 50s and 60s, where the Rat Pack hung out. They would go down to Delmar to the racetracks, and they would party at the roadside motel. Lore goes that that’s where their girlfriends would stay when they went with their wives to Delmar. They would come back and party with their girlfriends.
Imagine that. That was what was coming through my mind while I was developing the menu. I said, Oh my God. I’m obsessed with cookbooks, and I’m obsessed with this 60s cocktail culture also, how everyone ate everything off of sticks and forks. It was all mini-bites, and no one really ate because everyone was smoking cigarettes to be skinny. There was this fabulous air of ironic food consumption at that time. I collect vintage Tupperware, so it was this full-circle moment.
How are we going to start the meal at Leu Leu? There was going to be a Rip & Dip session. That’s what it’s called. Everything is just dips. You eat with your hands, and you eat with your friends. It makes your cell phone go away because your hands are full of dips and bread and butter. Then it started evolving from there. It’s a micro-kitchen: all induction, zero gas. Only three human beings fit cooking at a time in that kitchen, so I had to create a menu that fit the vibe, fit the space, while still being incredibly inspired in the integrated community that is San Diego and my travels.
There’s no limitations. There’s no box that we fit in. You couldn’t plant a flag. There’s no alphabetical order guidebook that we would fit in besides global or chef-driven. I didn’t want any of those tags. Come to Leu Leu and be inspired. The inside feels different than the outside. It feels like outside you’re in this Disneyland jungle paradise. [Inside] the chairs look like they come alive at night – very “Beauty and the Beast.” It feels warm and woodsy, like a 70s Brady Bunch motif. The color scheme of that orange-y brown. My grandmother’s pictures are on the walls because of Leu Leu’s age. We said, “Bring the grandma pictures of what age Leu Leu would be in.” It’s our grandmother’s in their thirties and forties or late twenties, early thirties. It’s sexy. I
Ironically or coincidentally – even though I don’t believe in coincidences – 90 percent of our diners are usually girls, and girl dinner is the biggest thing. It became this beautiful safe space for women to come and enjoy wine. It’s not a cocktail bar; we don’t have a liquor license, so it’s just wine and beer. Every time I look at the dining room, it’s 90 percent women having dinner with their girlfriends. I just find that to be so beautiful.
Who She Wants to Be
Kirk Bachmann: The whole time, I’m thinking, “My wife is going to absolutely love that you refer to your restaurant as ‘her.’” I’m going to have to book the flights. It feels whimsical. It feels playful. As you’re speaking, I’m thinking of “Mad Men.” What did people do in the 60s in their offices? There were no computers. Phones were tough. They drank and they had fun. They ideated and such.
You mentioned in that same article that I just mentioned, and I quote, “It’s not a restaurant or like any project I’ve ever done. It’s a lounge, the most indie project I’ve ever been a part of. We’re not trying to pull down the stars from the sky. We’re just punk kids doing something fun. It reminds me of Imperial Beach where I grew up. It’s a feral community. They embraced my weird.”
You kind of talked a little bit about where the inspiration came. I read also that some of this was initiated through a random direct message at a Padres game? At a baseball game? Which is also super cool, by the way.
Claudette Zepeda: Yeah, my business partner, I didn’t know them. I didn’t know the project. I live in South Bay – which San Diego has a South Bay, L.A. has a South Bay, and San Francisco has a South Bay. So South Bay San Diego – I live in Chula Vista – I worked in North County. In 2021, I opened a hotel there. I don’t have so much context of who lives there, the entrepreneurs there. I didn’t have that context really set in my brain.
I was at a Padres game. I have a relationship with the Padres; they give my kids and I tickets. I was at the last NLDS game when they were playing the Dodgers to see if they would make it to [the Championship Series] last October. Unbeknownst to me, my business partner was sitting behind me with his wife and another couple of friends. My kids and I were just having a good time. Padres were winning, and we turned around. You’re hiving just because it’s San Diego. Even if you don’t know each other, you’re just happy that your team’s winning.
The next day, I get a DM – a direct message – on my Instagram from Jason, my partner, saying, “Hey, I have this project in North County, in Leucadia . I’d love to show you around. Maybe you know someone who would be interested in joining the project.” The second I walked into Leu Leu, which was still mid-construction. Like I said, it had been a work-in-progress for the last two years, but as soon as I walked in there, something tapped me on the shoulder and said, “This is kind of cool.”
There was a poster of Marrakesh on the bottom. Marrakesh changed my life in 2014. It was just like, “Oh, that’s weird.” Then I saw something else, and I thought, “Oh, that’s…” So many little hints were being dropped. I said, “You know, this is what I can offer you. I still need to do the TV stuff. I still need to do the other businesses. I don’t necessarily want to be “chained to a stove.”
Long story short, everything worked out. We made an agreement. Our partnership is one of the most beautiful partnerships and most see-through, transparent partnerships: we feel something, we say something. That’s beautiful in our industry, especially as a female. My biggest request was I wanted my name on the marquee. I said, “All the guys have their names on the restaurants. I would like to have my name on the restaurant.” It was a yes.
Then the bus started running really fast. By the time I signed the paper in early December, we were open February 22.
Kirk Bachmann: Wow!
Claudette Zepeda: It went from no kitchen, no concept, to as soon as I walked in, I said, “I know exactly who she wants to be.” I made the menu for Leu Leu.
Food, Fashion, and What Humans Need
Kirk Bachmann: Isn’t it amazing? Sometimes when I think about this moment in time, the Bohemian feel, White Lotus on television. Everyone loves that. There’s a great restaurateur here in Boulder. His name is Bobby Stuckey. He’s got a super place called Frasca. I’m sure you know Bobby. He’s got this little restaurant in Denver called Sunday Vinyl. It’s kind of the same. It’s different. The theme is that his wife picks an album every night, and they spin the real album for the music.
We’re going to talk about music and motorcycles in a little bit, by the way. That’s like a must on the Ultimate Dish. Coming back to the menu, it’s all kind of making sense to me. I’m wondering: are there any sentimental dishes? It’s hard to put a menu together. You have to think about your guests. You had a certain vibe here. Are there some dishes, or some accoutrements, or some wines that just had to be there – no compromise – that maybe link to a special memory or cooking with your mom? That kind of thing.
Claudette Zepeda: There’s a couple things. I’m really obsessed with details. This is also the smallest restaurant I’ve ever worked on. When I say we did 90 covers for Mother’s Day, I’m used to doing 500 covers for Mother’s Day. This was also a very conscious choice to saying Yes to this project. I said I never wanted to do another big restaurant again because it’s just cost prohibitive in this current climate in making money in restaurants. You just don’t make money in those big restaurants. It’s really hard, at least.
When I was making the menu, I always think about the people making the food. I think of my cooks. I think, “If I’m not going to be there full time, how am I going to make them not miserable? How am I going to help them succeed? And how – with my name attached to the project – be able to represent me with the best form possible?”
The menu started developing by [thinking] “What would I want to eat? What would I cook for my friends at my house?” The very first thing that I ever remember eating, and I wrote an article in “Food and Wine” a couple years ago on aguachiles. Aguachiles is a raw seafood dish that is very popular in the north. It started in Sonora. So I did this feature in “Food and Wine” magazine on aguachiles, and it is the first thing I remember eating as a child with my father. That is always a staple on my menus. It just changes in the food combinations and the flavor combination. I started playing with aguachiles and what they could be, moving the needle forward in our generation of Mexican chefs making Mexican food in the U.S. and in the world. Right now, we have a coconut aguachile with a lemongrass broth. It’s kind of the tie-dye effect. I’m really inspired by fashion, so whenever I think of color palettes and color ways, I also bring that back to food and music. The aguachiles is definitely one of those starting point time and place dishes that I know exactly where I need to be at with those flavor profiles because they remind me of my father. They remind me of my childhood in Tijuana. That’s always a staple in my restaurants.
For Leu Leu, it’s the Faberge egg. I was just talking about this with my cooks as we were moving to transition some of the menu dishes off and bringing new ones on. We have a dish called Leu Leu’s Faberge Egg. When I was little my aunt, my mom’s sister, used to paint faux Faberge eggs with real eggs. She was – she is an amazing artist. I remember them all being in her buffet encased in these little eggs. They were very intricate. I said, “What if we do something about a Faberge egg?” It came to my mind. It’s a perfect egg, a six-minute egg, wrapped in sushi rice that’s seasoned, coated in panko, deep fried, sitting on top of a mound of wagyu tartar that is dressed with a tartar sauce, like lobster roll sauce, on top of the sweet-and-sour glaze. For me, it’s my whole immigrant kid childhood in a bite of Chinese flavors mixed with textures mixed with Japanese rice. It makes no sense, but it is so delicious. We serve it with nori that you can make a little handroll with. That’s become Leu Leu’s staple because that’s how I like to eat. I like to eat with my hands, and I like to eat with varied textures. That’s on the food side.
Then when you walk in – Noelle’s been there – when you walk into the restaurant, the first thing that I see when I walk through it – and I own the place – is the vintage Tupperware pickle container. If anyone remembers those pickle containers. It has a specific name even, but I can’t think of it right now. It’s a colander. It’s a square container that you lift the little thing. The juice stays on the bottom and all the pickles come up. Every Mexican household had one of those growing up. When you order a Rip & Dip, you get a vintage pickle container with your vegetable escabeche in it.
Kirk Bachmann: It’s interesting, though, when you talk about the Faberge egg, and maybe it’s because it just came to your mind, but when I think about the Faberge egg, I also think about the Brady’s House and that sort of architecture and those colors. Maybe what people are talking about in the office in the 60s when they were sneaking a gin and tonic at two o’clock.
Claudette Zepeda: Very, very obviously drinking.
Kirk Bachmann: Right? When you mentioned your attention to fashion, it took me back to my father. [He’s] a master pastry chef, so I kind of grew up in his kitchen. He was obsessed with the bathrooms, not necessarily from the wallpaper – back then, wallpaper was really fashionable – but more from a cleanliness [standpoint]. It had to feel clean, candles. It had to smell. It’s a sign that people care that you’re coming to their restaurant, their house, to eat.
There’s another super cool restaurant here in Boulder called Basta. One of the things I love about Basta is their bathrooms. This beautiful Asian-themed black wallpaper with white lotus flowers. It’s always just fascinating to me. They have cool music playing when you go in. I don’t know where I read it, but I read something about a really cool bathroom outside of the restaurant. Is that correct?
Claudette Zepeda: For Leu Leu?
Kirk Bachmann: For Leu Leu?
Claudette Zepeda: Yeah. Our restaurant is in the patio. You walk outside of the building, and it’s there. The designers that we worked with, Design 4 Corners, did a beautiful job. It’s basically mirrors from the top to the bottom, Moroccan light. Another thing that I’m very intentional about, the accoutrements inside of the bathroom. I have floss. I have mouthwash. We have a garlic toum. It’s delicious; it’s the most popular Rip & Dip we have, but also maybe only one of you have it. You don’t want to have the garlic breath, so we have floss in the bathroom. We have Chiclets, like the border – four little gums.
Kirk Bachmann: Oh my gosh, yeah. Chills. Wow.
Claudette Zepeda: So we have all of those things. We have sanitary products for women in there, on us. I just think it’s really important, those feminine details. It’s what sets you apart. We don’t do it to be different; it’s for me, how my moral compass works. At El Jardin, I had a diaper station in the women’s restroom where it was a full actual changing table. In the men’s restroom, I also had a hanging changing table because dads change diapers, too.
Those little things, to me, I don’t do it to be different necessarily or to catch attention. I do it just because I’m aware that humans need these things when they go and eat.
Projects and Advice
Kirk Bachmann: It’s so thoughtful, just like the surprise inside the Faberge egg. The dental floss, there’s the first date at the restaurant and the spinach that gets caught in the teeth. Why not make that comfortable for people? I love that. I absolutely love it.
How do you balance running a new restaurant, all the ideas, the customer experience, with all of the other things – pun intended – that are on your plate at any given time? Do you have a right-hand person, or two? Do you have people you trust, or is this all you?
Claudette Zepeda: No. Well, it varies. Thankfully, the projects flux in very organic way at the moment. It is all me at the moment. I don’t have a sous chef that is with me full time. I have a traveling sous who is amazing. She is with me on the projects when I launch out of San Diego. But on my day-to-day ops, it is just me at the moment. It’s me being creative and also me trying to keep my business bearings in mind. It is definitely the rubber hitting the road, with needing someone to help me really take the reins because I’m starting another project here in the summer. We get the keys to the airport project with Tony Hawk.
Kirk Bachmann: No way! No way. Wow.
Claudette Zepeda: No complaints. I read this thing that says, “I can’t complain. I’m not going to complain about what’s on my plate because my goal was to eat.” I think that really resonated with me. I’m still, at the moment, above water. Thankfully, in my spiritual journey and in my healing journey, I am able to wave that white flag and ask for help. So far, it’s been sustainable with just me being the creative captain so to speak.
Kirk Bachmann: All the thought leaders and rock stars that we speak with, there’s a theme. There’s entrepreneurship. I always try to be super, super respectful and never underestimate all of the work that went into what we’re talking about today. The years, the sometimes challenges, to seize these opportunities. There’s money. There’s worrying about your staff. I always say that. I premise the question of what advice you might give to a young entrepreneur, always remembering that it won’t happen by three o’clock this afternoon. It won’t happen probably by next Tuesday.
Where’s a good starting point on that list of priorities for someone who wants to be you?
Claudette Zepeda: I would tell them to see a psychiatrist and why they want to be me! It is a wild place to be.
I think the biggest thing that I’ve learned for myself over the last few years, again, in my spiritual journey and healing, past scars of our industry, how do I advocate for myself, is saying no. It is the most important sentence. “No” is a full sentence. Not being afraid to say no because you’re going to miss an opportunity. What is for us won’t miss us. That is my biggest lesson that I’ve learned.
Champion others. Championing others does not take away from you and your plate and what is coming to you. It actually helps breed a community and a sense of camaraderie that we need, especially as our stars rise. You need to have a really strong village that anchors you to the ground because it’s very easy to get lost in it. Gratitude. Saying no and gratitude have been two of the biggest things that have helped me keep my head above water and really focus on what I want and where I see myself. Seeing that, manifesting what is coming in the future and present, but I’m also visualizing the human I want to be and the doors that I want to prop open for the next generation.
When you rise up, reach back. That’s something that I learned with Gavin. To be a leader doesn’t mean to berate and to point fingers; it is to bring people with you, to walk amongst them, not in front of them. I think as a leader, no matter whether you own a sandwich shop or a giant restaurant with accolades from everyone, are you being authentically you? Or are you trying to be what everyone else thinks they want you to be? For me, authenticity is really personal.
An Eclectic Palate
Kirk Bachmann: So well said. So well said. I want to share another quote. So many quotes! This is from you. “My favorite memories revolve around food. I love that we as chefs can create memory time capsules. You know that feeling when it transports you back to a time and a place, wherever that is. I want to offer a trip into the past or a new memory to access the future.” With that as backdrop, we are going to have you take us back to your childhood, living close to the border in San Diego of Mexico. What was that experience like from a food memory perspective? Did that upbringing inspire some of your menus today?
Claudette Zepeda: Absolutely. As a border kid, I was raised by two very polar opposite upbringings. My mother comes from a very low socioeconomic family from Jalisco, but they traveled all over Mexico to make a living. My grandfather was a carpenter and was a nurse. He was kind of a Jack-of-all-trades. My grandmother had no schooling whatsoever, but for some reason, was very, very quick-witted and sharp as a freaking nail. Taught herself how to read, how to write, became a nurse. Her story is also incredible.
Then you have my dad’s side, which was educated. My dad was sent to military school at the age of seven until the age of eighteen. My grandfather was an entrepreneur of Molinos throughout Jalisco through Nayarit, and then my family moved to Jalisco.
You have these two opposites where my father comes from education. He graduated from Le Universidad Autonoma Guadalajara and then went to L.A. in the 60s. By the time he gets to Tijuana, he had this very evolved palate. My mother was a single mom of two working at a bank. My grandmother cooked for my brothers. My mom didn’t really know how to cook.
My dad came from this kind of educated family in Mexico, lands in L.A. in the 60s, haute cuisine, Wolfgang Puck. All these things were happening in L.A. Lands in T.J. with this very interesting palate and meets my mother, who doesn’t know how to cook. He would force her to push herself out of the box. He would say, “I want this, and I want Swedish meatballs today, and I want Chinese chicken salad. You should watch T.V.” So he would put on KPBS, and we would. As kids, Julia Child, and Jacques Pepin, and all the BBC shows were always on the backdrop. That’s how we learned to speak English.
All these food memories come from my father being this very whimsical character. If it was the last five dollars he had in his pocket, we would use it to eat something cool or something interesting. He would find a bodega, this random international bodega in Tijuana that he would find a can of escargot. He would land at the house and be like, “Mija, make me escargot!” [00:36:53] And my mom’s like, “We’re eating snails?” My mom was rice, beans, Mexican, Mexican. She was like, “You want me to cook you snails? How am I going to do?” “Joy of Cooking” was on our counter. There were some magazine clippings. It was just this chaos of my mom trying to appease my father’s palate. But what that did was it made us, we were of the “eat it and wear it” family. We never could say no. It was always, “Now we’re having steamed artichokes with drawn butter.
And then another day, we would go to their best friends [who] had an Italian restaurant. They were Roman, Italian from Rome, immigrated into Tijuana. They had an Italian restaurant called Vittorio’s. And Vittorio’s [was a] very red sauce joint. The gingham restaurants that were slightly plastic on top, but it was in Tijuana. We had the best. I learned the flavors of Italy, from carbonara to caccio e pepe. Best pizza. I would fill the cheese and the peppers at all the little tables, the wax dripping off those red [candles.] You know the ones I’m talking about.
I had all these characters. I think that’s what made a border region where the world truncates itself, and bottlenecks of everyone either wanting to make a living in Mexico at the border, which is very, very eclectic and there’s lots of different cultures that make Tijuana a home, and the ones that want to cross over, but they can’t. So they end up staying there. Tijuana is this beautiful human quilt. You can eat Russian food, Korean food, Chinese food, Japanese food. Chinese food, in my opinion, the best Sichuan and Cantonese food you can get in the border region between Tijuana and Mexicali and Calexico.
That’s what makes me. I am a chameleon. I am ethnically ambiguous. Everywhere I’ve been around the world, they don’t really know where I’m from. That helps me blend into places and be unassuming while absorbing everything. That’s what it felt like as a child. I was just wide-eyed, listening to the accents and the smells and the flavors. When you grow up in Tijuana, you can wake up and smell charcoal burning as they’re getting ready to feed the people that are in the industrial areas. The gas smells mix with the carne asada.
The only other place that I have felt at home in that sense is India and Marrakesh. You see yourself. You can feel your bones recognize certain places. It just felt so eerily familiar. “I feel safe here.” Because growing up in T.J., I was just this “Fear-and-Loathing-in-Las-Vegas” trip. But if you grow up in that environment, it makes any other environment seem kind of low key. That’s how I cook because all these flavors were in my life.
The Story of the Taco
Kirk Bachmann: I love that. I know exactly that sensation that you’re expressing that your bones feel okay, at home.
You worked in kitchens across the area, San Diego. Another great quote: “I resisted putting tacos on my menu at first because I didn’t want to distract from the rest of the narrative.” That’s powerful. What was your fear at that time?
Claudette Zepeda: Our philosophy, I would say the modern Mexican chef philosophy in my generation of cooks is that you can go to any Mexican restaurant in Mexico City; you don’t see tacos on a menu because there are taqueros on the corner. Why would we take business from them? That’s what they do. Their entire life revolves around making tacos.
In the United States, we already have such a small, narrow-minded view of what Mexican cuisine is. How am I going to move it forward if I’m just doing what everyone thinks I should be doing? And offering it at prices that an American restaurant, a United States restaurant needs to be able to make their margins? Imagine if I made tacos for two dollars, what people think the value of it is, and I have young chefs that I need to be able to pay livable wages to. The economics never [mathed.]
You could build your own taco. In our culture, everything is a taco. Literally. When you grow up, your mom tells you, “There’s food on the stove. Make yourself a taco.” We say that, “Hazte un taco,” because everything in a tortilla becomes a taco, anything you put in it.
I wanted to remove that vernacular from my restaurants because there’s a time and place for tacos, and it wasn’t going to be in one of my restaurants. I wanted to paint with a broader brush.
Kirk Bachmann: I have to gather myself here. I got very emotional. I’m ashamed of myself in a strange sort of way because the way you just articulated that – and this is not on the script, everyone. Believe me. I never thought of it that way. Shame on me. I never thought of [that]. What I thought of and what a lot of people think of – we’ll use “taco” as an example – “Gotta have this great taco on the menu because that’s what resonates with people.” But yet, that family that’s been creating tacos on the street for generations, that’s where it belongs. That’s very beautifully said. I’m not doing it justice, but I want you to know, emotionally, you’ve touched me with that. My narrative is changing just in this hour that I’m spending with you. Really, really beautiful.
Another article – you write a lot, or people quote you a lot, Chef. This comes from “Bon Appetit.” Sorry for the emotion. Food is love, right? “Borders are just man-made parameters that close people in. I don’t like parameters around my life or my food. That’s why the word ‘fusion’ doesn’t mean anything to me. Everything is fused together already. Instead…” – and I’ve heard this before. I love this – “Instead, I like to think of food as a tribute to. Like the taco from the stand in Tijuana. I do tributes wherever I go. Like, ‘I see you. You have this.’ Well, we have this. Let’s make it something beautiful.”
I’m going to come back to Leu Leu again. Is this the tapestry of that restaurant? This is how your philosophy and your way of thinking has been woven into the menu and the mantra at Leu Leu.
The Original American Dream
Claudette Zepeda: Something also that people don’t really consider is that if I say I have a Mexican restaurant, that comes with a lot of personal biases that I am not willing to participate in. My diners. What we fail to also understand as a human race and give credit to is that Mexico was the original American dream. There were articles all over newspapers in Europe saying, “Go to Mexico. They have so many natural resources. Set up businesses and come back.” People went on a boat, and they landed in Veracruz in the ports, and they never went back home. We were the first dream country that people would land in from Europe. [They] would dream.
What it did was it created a quilt of human diversity and flavor marriages that we don’t really see across other continents and countries as Mexico because Mexico is huge. It has microclimates from the north to the south that make it one of the most diverse pieces of land in the world.
I prefer to use the word “marriage” because these are things that came together consciously through some not-so-great times and not-so-great circumstances. What thrived was the flavors and the meetings at the table. Fusion. I think of metal when I think of the word fusion. The 70s. It just doesn’t do it justice because it’s two things that don’t belong being forced together by extreme heat and melted together. That’s what I think of fused. And when I think of a marriage, I think of a very conscious decision to shake hands and to say, “I see you, what you have. I have what I have. Where do we come together and come up with this most delicious thing that we can?”
The majority of what people consider classical Mexican or authentic, traditional, all that stuff, it is very, very unique to a family. You can have ten moles or ten albondigas in the same city block and each one of them tastes very different because that make up is very different. My family in Guadalajara, they’re half Greek. They eat differently than the family next door who is Mexican-Jewish or Afro-Mexican or Italian-Mexican. All of these Humans actually live in our country and have made Mexican cuisine the most global cuisine, in my opinion, that I’ve ever had. How amazing is that?
Let’s celebrate it instead of calling out our differences, we should really say how similar we all are. There are African dishes that are pretty much textbook what you eat in Mexico. We just call it a different thing.
Don’t Underestimate Women – or Claudette
Kirk Bachmann: Every time I see the name Claudette going forward in my life, I’m going to think of the word “humility.” I just absolutely love this conversation.
I have another quote. Again, emotional. “My dream was to be off food stamps and not have to tell my kids ‘we’re playing hide-and-seek with the lights off’ because I couldn’t pay the light bill. That’s as big as I was dreaming.” So, Chef, you found this deep motivation to succeed, be a great mom and a great role model. Can you tell us a little bit more about Viva la Vida and how you’re giving back to others? We’re both going to start crying here in a minute.
Claudette Zepeda: I’m pinching myself to distract myself.
Kirk Bachmann: Long live life.
Claudette Zepeda: Viva la Vida is obviously a very famous Frida Kahlo quote. I even have it tattooed on my arm. Live life to the fullest. She died in 1954, and coincidentally, my mother was born in 1954. It’s always resonated to me. Maybe she’s my mother reincarnated. That’s a story I tell myself.
What I noticed when I was building El Jardin in 2018 and 2019 was the women. The women. Again, something topped me on the shoulder, an ancestral wisdom, I’ll call it. We’re really the secret. We are the Pandora’s box of an entire country. It’s within me, within my daughter, within my grandmother, and my great-grandfather. They say there are two thousand women that come before you. Imprinted in your women, it’s the fingerprints of two thousand other women.
I would buy ingredients. I tried to find out what made Mexican cuisine so special, and it was really the dirt that the ingredients grow in. At El Jardin, I would import about 30 percent of the dry ingredients. It was me going to Mexico, finding the purveyors, and having them ship it to Tijuana and then I would toss it in my car. What was the common theme was in these markets, it was all women that I was dealing with.
Half of them, I would say, “How do I transfer money to you?”
And half of them say, “Well, send it to my son.”
I would say, “I don’t really feel comfortable sending it to your son. I would like to send it to you.”
A sidebar: I’ve had to moonlight in a lot of different other jobs in my life, in my children’s lives. One of the jobs I had in 2010 to 2013 was I was a bookkeeper for a nonprofit that had offices in Africa, Mexico, in Thailand. I was a bookkeeper. I was very good at numbers. I’m a very A-type creative. I learned the micro-saving loans programs that work through USAID.
I tried to take that model. How do I help women establish financial businesses in Mexico? How do I help them be financially independent in how to keep books and how to do the transactional stuff, how to keep a ledger?
So I started asking questions and finding the right ingredients with the right women who were interested in financial literacy. I had little hugs of planting seeds. “You can do this. You don’t need your son. You can do this. You don’t need your husband. This is your money. You made it. This is for you.”
It really comes down to me being who I wish I had when I was a young mother. I remember being told that I wasn’t going to graduate high school because I was in a self-study program. I was missing three credits. The counselor for the learning center at my high school, Mar Vista, basically said, “You’re not walking.”
I said, “I’ll show you.” “Okay, is that what we’re doing? We’re going to underestimate me? I got you.” I was working full-time. Literally, I was working forty hours a week by the time I was a senior in high school. I said, “Okay, watch me.”
Two days later, I came back with all three credits. Then she tried to tell me that I did it too fast and I wasn’t going to walk still.
I said, “Absolutely not. What, are you crazy? You think I had somebody do this for me? Who’s going to do this homework for me? I did it.” It’s not that I couldn’t, it’s just that I was working full-time.
Anyway, I did walk. Then I remember wanting to go to culinary school about six months later, walking in with my baby in a stroller. She laughed at me. That same counselor laughed at me.
She said, “You should just go to vocational training school. Go be a nurse’s assistant. Culinary school? You’re never going to make it.” The moment of little Claudette being underestimated.
I said, “Okay. Watch me.”
Now we’re here, talking about that moment. All those things were leading me and were the building blocks of who I wanted to become. And who I didn’t want [to become.] She was just one example of women that underestimate women, young girls. I would walk into my social workers office with my head down, so embarrassed that I had to ask for food stamps and had to ask for cash aid.
I realized something once I got out of it. The system is rigged for you to stay in it forever. That’s why women keep having children. It’s a prison. It’s a gilded prison they keep you in, and God forbid you work one extra hour because then they take half of your cash aid away. Then you’re stuck. You’re like, Okay, well, I can never work full time because the government has you by the shackles saying, “Nope. You’re going to stay in this socioeconomic level. You better never make one more penny because we’ll take away all your medical benefits.” You can’t traverse that curve fast enough to be on the other side to be able to have benefits for all your children. You’re just in this loop. I found that to be so predatory.
So Viva la Vida was [asking] “How do I help women and girls believe in themselves and set themselves up for a future of not needing it?” I don’t want it to be an emergency cash fund. I want it to be a preemptive solution. How do you avoid the emergency? How do you set someone up?
Do you even know where you spend your money? Because I remember getting my first paycheck. I blew my credit when I was 18 because they gave me a credit card for five hundred bucks. I was like, “Oh, free money? Amazing.” I just didn’t understand what it was.
That’s where Viva la Vida was the seed that was planted. The women in Mexico not believing that they should have their own money, that they shouldn’t have their own coffee can, so to speak. They didn’t have…
The Soundtrack for Everything
Kirk Bachmann: It’s a freedom in so many ways. I love the concept of financial literacy. It all starts with that, educating. The teacher will educate. The teacher will educate. Again, we go back to – you’re busy. You’ve got a lot going on. That you prioritize giving back to those who are on a path that you were once on is so commendable. It’s absolutely amazing. Financial literacy, that crosses borders. Everyone has to understand financial literacy. How do I get here? How do I get out of here? How do I stay here? Bravo. Bravo. Bravo for all that. And much more success.
I have no idea where the last hour went. There’s no way I’m done yet. I mentioned earlier that so many people that I chat with that are in this space, food, there’s music. Somehow, some way, there’s music. And then often there’s motorcycles. So I always have to ask: which is it? Or is it both? Is music a part of your life?
Claudette Zepeda: Huge. Music has the same power that food and fashion do. It really transports me to a time and place. I have a soundtrack for every different chapter of my life. Certain voices remind me that this isn’t my first time here. I listen to Jimi Hendrix riff on a guitar, or Jimmy Page and Janis Joplin sing “Kaleidoscope.” You listen to these voices, and there’s so much wisdom there. They are saying more than they’re singing. It’s a feeling. It’s an emotion.
I remember writing a whole menu to Wu-Tang Clan’s “36 Chambers.” It’s poetry, and lyricists’ ability to make you feel seen. They give you the words that you didn’t think you needed. Something about the 70s for me has always resonated incredibly, deep reactions. Poetry, which is the best songwriter-singers are also the poets. The Dylan’s.
Kirk Bachmann: I don’t know if you can see it behind me, but chefs are rock stars, in my mind. Some ride motorcycles, some don’t, but all love music. I’ve got U2. I’ve got Fleetwood Mac. I’m giving away my age. Bob Seeger. Just small album covers. It’s just such a nice conversation starter. I can remember my first concert when I was younger, and I’ll go to more. We saw one of the last shows of the Dead touring with John Mayer and those guys. They brought Dave Matthews on stage for the last act. I thought my wife was going to lose her mind.
It transports you, right? Just like Bobby does at his restaurant. You come in to have a beautiful meal, but that song and that menu might take you somewhere you didn’t expect. Like this show has taken me many places that I didn’t expect.
Before I let you go, Claudette, the name of the show is The Ultimate Dish, so there is no way you can leave us without telling me, in your mind, what is the ultimate dish?
Chef Claudette Zepeda’s Ultimate Dish
Claudette Zepeda: The ultimate dish. I always say the last meal on Earth I want to have is my Mom’s albondigas, cooked by her, and her arroz con leche. You’re about to cook my childhood when you get your recipe. Please let me know how you like it. That makes me – I’m forty one this year, and I still have my mommy come over to my house and cook this for me. I can make it, but hers tastes better.
Kirk Bachmann: Of course it does.
Claudette Zepeda: [Inaudible] a stack of fresh tortillas with albondigas and staring at my kids faces as they eat it and remember. That’s how I felt when I was a kid eating it. It’s a very specific dish that doesn’t taste like anything else. It has mint, but it has tomato, but it has oregano, but it has chile. It has a hard-boiled egg in it, which is like a Scotch egg, but it’s not. Where did this come from? I honestly stopped asking a long time ago. I’d rather be present and enjoy it than ask the whys for that dish.
Kirk Bachmann: Perfect. Perfect answer. I knew you would blend a memory or a feeling or a moment into your ultimate dish.
Thank you so much, Chef, for spending some time with us. Apologies for the emotion. Very, very meaningful chat today. I appreciate you very much.
Claudette Zepeda: Thank you, Chef. I appreciate it.
Kirk Bachmann: Thank you for listening to the Ultimate Dish podcast, brought to you by Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts. Visit escoffier.edu/podcast to find any materials mentioned during the podcast, including notes, links and other resources. And if you can, please leave us a rating on Apple or Spotify, and subscribe to support our show. This helps us reach more aspiring individuals ready to take the next step toward their dream careers. Thanks for listening.