Bar Jardin Zocalo

Claudette Zepeda-Wilkins on What It Means to Open a Matriarchal Restaurant | Bon Appétit

"A newly opened San Diego restaurant led by chef Claudette Zepeda-Wilkins centers on matriarchal cooking that honors mothers and grandmothers and aims to preserve regional Mexican recipes. The menu is deeply personal — a reinterpretation of her aunt’s pozole recalls childhood nights cutting vegetables in a Guadalajara restaurant — and showcases hard-to-find Oaxacan ingredients sourced directly from women producers, including papilla mixe used in a tamal con mole poblano, pixtli to flavor the ice cream in the No Mamey’s dessert (served with almond brown butter cake and heirloom corn pinole crumb), rosita for a brunch chocoatole, and other native items like chicatanas, chile costeño and piñon rosita; the chef also purchased large quantities of a mole paste made by a mole-maker’s mother. The space features woven textiles from women in Oaxaca and Chiapas in the lounge, operates with the intensity of a new restaurant while remaining warm and familial (the chef’s daughter is often there), and foregrounds the preservation of culinary lineage even as some critics push back on the “matriarchal” label." - ByZan Romanoff