92 MAY 2019
a phrase you’ll hear often in Puerto
Rico: buen provecho. It’s the local
way of saying “enjoy your meal,” but
the two words literally translate to “good advantage.” And it’s
a phrase that captures the determined optimism and creative
energy taking hold on the island today.
It’s been a long time coming. On September 20, 2017, Hurricane
Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico, leaving it in shambles. The
storm, the worst in 85 years, raked the island with 155-mile-
per-hour winds, causing more than $100 billion worth of dam-
age and taking 2,975 lives. Eighty percent of the island’s crop
value vanished, and tens of thousands of
residents fared without electricity or staple
foods for the better part of a year. After the
storm, nearly 4 percent of the population
left the island for good.
But many, many more stayed. Among
them was a cadre of committed chefs who
set out to rebuild what was destroyed and
to create something new from what remained—
building up the island’s advantages through their
creativity, activism, and cooking. This spring, I set
out to meet them.
atalia Rivera Vázquez, 35, is the Con-
dado Vanderbilt Hotel’s executive
sous chef, cooking at the acclaimed
1919 Restaurant alongside the execu-
tive chef Juan José Cuevas. I met with her in the
hotel’s rose-colored marble lobby during one of
her rare moments of downtime: Vázquez also
owns El Jangiri, a poke-bowl spot in the popular
San Juan “gastro-park” Lote 23, and, in partner-
ship with Vanderbilt pastry chef Nasha Fondeur,
runs the dessert caterer La Postrería (one recent
gig: the opening gala for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s
Puerto Rico Hamilton run).
A year and a half ago, she told me, the same
lobby we were standing in was packed with
hundreds of relief workers, all of whom Vázquez
and her team were scrambling to feed. “It was
heartbreaking,” she said. “Suddenly, our men-
tality became about finding food—any food—and
feeding the people who were working 24 hours
a day to help us get back onto our feet.”
Today, Vázquez continues to focus on recovery,
particularly the island’s agriculture. Before the
hurricane, El Jangiri was an island leader for local
sourcing, getting 80 percent of ingredients from Puerto Rican
producers—on an island that imports 85 percent of its food. In
the wake of the storm, which devastated Puerto Rico’s farms,
Vázquez’s team has doubled down on those efforts, developing
a network of over 30 chefs; every time she meets with a local
farmer, she texts the network price comparisons with imported
products. “Because of our buying power, hotels are in a position
to have a real impact here,” she says.
Later that day, as I wandered among the stalls in Lote 23,
Mario Juan Pagán, 31, poked his head out of the window of
an antique silver Airstream, home to Pagán’s Pernilería Los
Próceres (aka PLP). Inside its metal walls, the chef channels his
experience in world-class restaurants like New York’s Momo-
fuku and San Sebastian’s Akelarre into sandwiches like the
Revolución es Orden (nine-hour slow-roasted pork shoulder
piled with carrot, radish, plantain chips, cilantro, and spicy
mayo, served on a fluffy white roll). As I walked up, a long line
of sandwich pilgrims was snaking out from the trailer.
“We were shut down for two weeks. Then, even with gen-
erators, the power was constantly going in and out,” Pagán
says. “Nobody wanted to leave their homes.
The traffic lights were dead. There were car
accidents everywhere.” But as soon as they
were able, Pagán and his fellow vendors
started cooking, sending their food out to
more remote areas on the island.
At her restaurant Gallo Negro in the artsy
neighborhood of Santurce, I meet María
abov e: Rebuilding continues in San Juan.
opposite: At El Jangiri, Vázquez’s local
riffs on poke bowls feature breadfruit
escabeche with tuna tartare, eggplant
confit, cilantro, and bok choy.
previous page: Jerk chicken with
sautéed udon noodles at Gallo Negro.
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