The Migrant Chef: The Life and Times of Lalo Garca

A New Yorker Best Book of 2023 An NPR 2023 "Books We Love" Pick A chefs gripping quest to reconcile his childhood experiences as a migrant farmworker with the rarefied world of fine dining. Born in rural Mexico, Eduardo Lalo Garca Guzmn and his family left for the United States when he was a child, picking fruits and vegetables on the migrant route from Florida to Michigan. He worked in Atlanta restaurants as a teenager before being convicted of a robbery, incarcerated, and eventually deported. Lalo landed in Mexico City as a new generation of chefs was questioning the hierarchies that had historically privileged European cuisine in elite spaces. At his acclaimed restaurant, Mximo Bistrot, he began to craft food that narrated his memories and hopes. Mexico Citybased journalist Laura Tillman spent five years immersively reporting on Lalos story: from Mximos kitchen to the onion fields of Vidalia, Georgia, to Dubais first high-end Mexican restaurant, to Lalos hometown of San Jos de las Pilas. What emerges is a moving portrait of Lalos struggle to find authenticity in an industry built on the very inequalities that drove his family to leave their home, and of the artistic process as Lalo calls on the experiences of his life to create transcendent cuisine. The Migrant Chef offers an unforgettable window into a familys border-eclipsing dreams, Mexicos culinary heritage, and the making of a chef.