RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT 10.01.26 THE ART OF COOKING MEXICAN FOOD

On September 24th, 2026, the Centro Cultural Aztlan in San Antonio, Texas, hosted a book signing of Foods of La Frontera by author and award-winning chef Pati Jinich. Chef Pati has written four books on Mexican cooking and has won four James Beard Awards for her PBS series on Mexican cooking.

Her latest book, Foods of La Frontera, is the result of an immersive ten-year journey traveling along the 1,954-mile US-Mexico border, beginning in San Diego and Tijuana on the western coast and ending in Brownsville, Texas, and Matamoros on the Gulf of Mexico.

The term “border,” she observed, “sounds so forbidding, final.” She much prefers the Spanish name, “la frontera, the frontier, suggesting not just the end of one place, but the beginning of another. “La frontera,” she adds, “has always been about origins, possibilities, and invention.”

Throughout her zigzag travels along the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, Chef Pati found that where Mexico and the United States meet, “exciting things happen to food.” She noted that several of the world’s favorite dishes were born in la frontera: “nachos, burritos, fish tacos, Caesar Salad, and margaritas, just to name a few.” I have also heard that South Texas cooks claim beef fajitas as their own invention, created during the era of the big cattle drives.

The Centro Cultural Aztlan hosted the book signing for Foods of La Frontera as a fundraiser for the San Antonio Food Bank, where Harriett served as board president last year. Through funds from Wells Fargo Bank, we secured light appetizers prepared by Chef Geronimo Lopez, Executive Vice President of Culinary Operations of the San Antonio Food Bank. The City of San Antonio recognized Chef Geronimo as a culinary ambassador in 2017, and he has also received honors from the James Beard Foundation “America’s Taste Twenty” program.

Chef Geronimo’s work centers on turning large-scale meal production into a nutrition- and flavor-conscious hunger-relief program. In the Food Bank’s summer initiative, he helps oversee the preparation of more than 5,000 meals a day distributed through over 100 Summer Meal sites across the community. The program’s June 1–August 8 campaign seeks to address a reported 20-million-meal gap across Southwest Texas through meal sites, grocery distributions, and partnerships.

Nearly 100 people showed up for Chef Pati’s book signing, with the proceeds going to the San Antonio Food Bank. Chef Francisco Estrada, owner and chef at NACO Grayson, was among the chefs attending the Centro event. After the book signing event, we accepted Chef Francisco’s invitation to join him at Naco Grayson near the Pearl Complex. At his restaurant, Harriett and I tasted a delicious creamy corn dish and several meat and chili tacos. The restaurant’s recognitions include local “Best Tacos” and “Best Food Truck” honors and placement among notable Mexican restaurants in San Antonio.

Chefs Estrada and his wife, Chef Lizzeth Martínez have become prominent figures in San Antonio’s food scene. Both were named 2026 James Beard Award semifinalists for Best Chef, Texas. The City of San Antonio selected Lizzeth Martínez as a UNESCO Creative City Gastronomy Chef Ambassador for 2025–2027. UNESCO selected San Antonio in 2017 as a Creative City of Gastronomy—not simply as a “food city” distinction for restaurant quality, but as a city recognized for its deep, living culinary culture and a municipal commitment to preserve, develop, and share that culinary culture internationally.

UNESCO chose San Antonio because the city made a compelling case that its cuisine reflects more than three centuries of cultural exchange. Corn-centered foodways, chile-based cooking, masa traditions, ranching and barbecue, Mexican and Tex-Mex cooking, panadería, and contemporary chef-led innovation all contribute to the city’s distinctive food identity.

After a superb tasting event at Naco Grayson, we joined Chef Pati and headed downtown to explore food preparation with Chef Leo Davila, a San Antonio native and a Food Network alumnus. In recent recognitions, Chef Leo was named a 2026 James Beard Award semifinalist for Anacacho Coffee & Cantina at the St. Anthony Hotel.

Chef Leo Davila is also the head of the Esencia restaurant at the St. Anthony Hotel. His cooking is rooted in the food traditions of South Texas and in his family’s Mexican and Chinese background. At Esencia, Chef Leo combines Mexican, Chinese, Spanish, and broader Texas influences in a contemporary fine-dining format. The stated focus includes Texas beef and game, Gulf seafood, heirloom vegetables, moles, and dishes that balance the sweet-savory profile associated with his cooking.

I learned a lot from our two-day visit with Chef Pati. Growing up, I was surrounded by Mexican food. My parents owned a mom-and-pop grocery store in the middle of San Antonio’s Westside, a largely Mexican neighborhood that sold home-cooked barbacoa [Mexican barbecue] and chicharrones on the weekends. I helped prepare the goat head [chivos] for overnight cooking in a deep pit in our store’s backyard. Several times a week we also made our own chicharrones [pig skins] in a large four-foot-tall cast iron pot.

After their Westside San Antonio mom-and-pop grocery store closed in 1970, my parents opened a Mexican restaurant they named La Cabana. My mother, Alicia Saenz Romo, was self-taught as a cook, but credits her mother with teaching her the basics of preparing Mexican food, including making homemade corn and flour tortillas.

My parents’ success in the restaurant business resulted from great home-cooked meals and the restaurant’s rural location. La Cabana was outside San Antonio’s city limits, not far from Mission Espada. Most importantly, there were few restaurant competitors in the area. My parents owned and operated the restaurant for 50 years. La Cabana was known for my mom’s delicious Tex-Mex dishes, including enchiladas made with red corn tortillas and chalupas with pinto beans, lettuce, tomatoes, and chicken.

During the first decade of their opening, my parents drove to the Mexican border cities of Nuevo Laredo [across from Laredo, Texas] or Piedras Negras [across from Eagle Pass] to buy spices and chiles verdes. The inside of our restaurant reflected Mexican culture, with velvet paintings of bullfighters and portraits of China Poblana [Mexican women in richly embroidered Mexican-style blouses à la Frida Kahlo]. I helped buy and transport the restaurant’s wrought-iron chandelier from Tijuana, and many of the kitchen pots and pans came from Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Guanajuato.

Mexican food, Chef Pati reminded us, is not only an important source of nourishment and cultural affirmation, but it also serves as an economic driver for the Borderlands. Corn, tomatoes, chiles, avocados, and beans, most often associated with Mexican cuisine, are important to the economy of Mexican and Texas farm regions. In addition, every county in Texas has an abundance of Mexican restaurants and food trucks that employ armies of cooks and servers. However, as Chef Pati’s beautiful cookbooks clearly demonstrate, food of the Borderlands also carries a rich cultural heritage, family cooking traditions, and beloved flavors and memories.

**Special thanks to Centro Director Malena Gonzalez-Cid; Ruth Guajardo, Centro Curator; Wells Fargo representative Inigo Arzac; and food writer Rodrigo Bravo for making Chef Pati’s book signing a tremendous success.

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Copyright 2026 by Ricardo Romo. All photo credits as indicated above.