APRIL 2020 103
of the most significant chefs in Valle de Guadalupe, who runs
it with his brother and mom. But, Zepeda says, there’s also
Natalia Badan, “the Alice Waters of the region,” a daughter of
European immigrants who has been growing wine grapes in
Valle de Guadalupe for decades and was a pioneer of better land
management in the region. And that’s the way with Zepeda:
behind every narrative on the tip of her tongue, a woman she
bets you’ve forgotten.
We make our way out of town, back toward the border,
toward those churros, chancing a short lane of traffic only to
find that it takes us in a circle and dumps us right back in the
center of town. Trying again, we zoom up Paseo de los Héroes,
passing monuments to Mexican general Ignacio Zaragoza; to
Cuauhtémoc, the last Aztec emperor; to Abraham Lincoln. (Lin-
coln was a great friend to Mexico and supported the progressive
politics of Benito Juárez.)
But Zepeda doesn’t brake for any of these. Her favorite
monument is an avenue over, on Paseo del Centenario: Diana
Cazadora, goddess of the hunt, protector of mothers and chil-
dren. She’s all long hair and muscle, bow cocked, full quiver.
She’s ready to let it fly.around densely packed cones of piloncillo. We
pick through crystalline piles of candied dates,
pineapples, and mangoes and hunt for paddles
of nopales and chayote, a squash that looks like
the pubescent, pimpled love child of an avocado
and a Bartlett pear. We pack it all into the trunk
and push deeper into TJ.
That the Caesar salad was created not in Italy
but in a hotel restaurant in Tijuana in the 1920s
is a reasonably well-documented fun fact, so we
stop at its birthplace on Avenida Revolución to
pay our respects. It’s a tableside affair, all egg
yolk and Worcestershire and Grey Poupon—
that’s important, says Zepeda—and long spears
of romaine. As we leave Hotel Caesar’s, we drive
past a club called Adelita, and Zepeda clucks
her tongue. “Adelita is the name for the female
soldiers who participated in the Mexican Revo-
lution,” she says. It’s a proud history of courageous women,
whose stories of valor live on in many corridos, Mexican folk
ballads. “And yet in Tijuana,” says Zepeda, gesturing toward the
bar, “Adelita is a whorehouse.”
Exalting, and even reconciling, the spiritual role and character
of the Mexican woman is at the heart of so much of Zepeda’s
work. Before she parted ways with El Jardín, the restaurant
carried that message in every choice—the menu’s many nods
to Zepeda’s foremothers, the literal and figurative guardians
and ministers of Mexican culture; the textiles woven by female
artisans in Oaxaca; the bathrooms stocked with tampons from
Cora, a company that balances its sales with free products and
reproductive education for women in developing nations.
“Women are the magic that makes Mexico turn. They are the
fountain of power,” Zepeda tells me at Erizo, a cevichería in
Tijuana’s Chapultepec neighborhood. We eat aguachile made
with those callo de hacha—so named for their ax-head-shaped
shells—and drink a juicy, wild Pet
Mex from Bichi, a new Tecate outfit
at the white-hot center of Mexico’s
natural wine movement. The com-
pany is owned by Jair Téllez, oneleft: Zepeda’s Chilaquiles
Rojos (recipe p. 118)
abov e: Zepeda at Tacos El
Gordo in San Diego“CHILAQUILES IS ONE DISH I
MAKE EXACTLY THE WAY WE ATE
IT GROWING UP. THE TOTOPOS
[TORTILLA CHIPS] HAVE TO BE
EXTRA CRUNCHY.”
—CLAUDETTE ZEPEDA
0420_FT_Claudette_Zepeda.indd 103 FINAL CONTENT 2/14/20 1:47 PM