IntroductionWelcome to one of the most ambitious projects that I have embarked on in my personal and professional life: Telling the stories of and celebrating the people who live in the borderlands.
There is a unique culture in the lands that surround the line drawn in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which divided Mexico and the US. The borderlands between the countries have always been home to beautiful tales of migration, immigration, resilient and often misunderstood people, and of course a shared love of food.
I have been a border kid for four decades, and I’ve cooked professionally for over half that time. So much of who I am is a result of where I was raised, the smells and sounds of my childhood, moving seamlessly—daily—between San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Mexico. But I didn’t always know that’s what made me who I am.
For the first decade of my career, I thought, like many indoctrinated immigrants do, that if I was going to find any kind of success, I needed to push who I am and where my family was from as far back in my mind as possible. Then, in 2014, I took a life-altering trip—my first time abroad. I had the opportunity to travel to Marrakech, Morocco. I saw the matriarchs at the markets, I saw the different religions and cultures colliding yet coexisting. I witnessed the bustling market, dowels covered with freshly butchered meat for the morning shopping rush. I smelled meat grilling over wood and kids playing soccer in the middle of the market halls. And suddenly, seven thousand miles away from home, I saw myself back in Tijuana. I tasted the air, closed my eyes, and became emotional. Why did I have to travel all the way to Africa to find home?
My aunt Lorenza told me shortly after: “Your motherland will always call you home—but you don’t get to choose how the message arrives.” I came back home with a fire in my belly to learn to understand myself as a first generation Mexican American: raised as a Mexican daughter in California, with a life that took me back and forth across the border daily. Part of understanding my identity is understanding the mindset of the border kid: Having a foot in two countries, being a chameleon who has the ability to be fluid, to blend in anywhere in the world (yes, even with my green hair and tattoos!).
I have also dedicated the last decade-plus to learning about the cultural and culinary anthropology of Mexico and its immigrants—the who, what, and whys of our food world. I wanted to write this book to take you with me on a journey across the borderlands, starting from where I am from on the Pacific Coast, and heading east through the Sonoran desert and cowboy country. I want you to see, smell, hear, and taste these lands with me, and hopefully feel, as I do, that there is a connection to be shared.
The biggest disclaimer I will give in this book—and any book I write—is that it is almost impossible to include every recipe from even a single square-mile area, let alone the thousands of square miles that make up our border regions. And when it comes to the recipes I’ve written, if your grandmother did it differently, just know that she’s right and I’m wrong. (In fact, I concede power to all grandmothers. Tías—aunts—I’ll exchange words with, but abuelitas? Not a chance in H-E double hockey sticks. They win every time.)
Copyright © 2026 by Claudette Zepeda. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
