Where the Best Cooks Come From: Puebla, Mexico

Travelojos: Where Cooks Come From

A recent episode (Jan. 5) of the Food Network  show No Reservations features Mexico and its cuisine.  Those in the U.S. who missed it can download it from iTunes, blogger Mexile says

The book upon which the show is based– Anthony Bourdain’s travel-foodie classic A Cook’s Tour–includes a chapter entitled “Where Cooks Come From.”

Bourdain explains in the 2001 book that when he needs to find a cook for Les Halles– the New York-based French restaurant–he looks past France or Italy as sources of culinary talent.

Instead, focuses his recruitment efforts on people from the Mexican state of Puebla. Many areas of the state, he says,  are like a “talent pool of free-agent or draft picks in professional sports.”

Specifically,  Bourdain says he finds the best help in Puebla from the small area around the towns of Izucar de Matamoros, Atlixco, and Tlapanala.  He says the epicenter of fine French cooking seems to be in Tlapanala, which looks to be about 5o miles southwest of Mexico City.

He describes Tlapanala as a “sleepy little village surrounded by sugarcane fields and mango trees, about three miles outside of Izucar.

In his book Bourdain describes how many Mexicans carve out a place for themselves in the U.S. restaurant scene. He says:

While we have yet to see as many mestizo-looking chefs with Spanish-sounding last names running high-end French kitchens as we should, all those dishwashers and porters didn’t simply settle for spending the rest of their lives cleaning up after the rest of us. They watched, they learned, they trained on garde-manger and grill and prep and saute-usually on their own time-and when some flighty white kid decided he wanted the winter off to go skiing in Colorado, they were ready to step in.

When it comes to restaurant hiring practicies, it seems that Bourdain is true to his word. Author and blogger David Lida recounts in this post how Carlos Llaguno, from Puebla, rose from the ranks as a dishwasher in Bourdain’s kitchen to become its top chef after Bourdain left cooking to become a full-time media personality.