Who is La Cocina?
By: Mary Balog
“We Are La Cocina: Recipes in Pursuit of the American Dream”, By: Caleb Zigas & Leticia Landa
Tina Stevens, chef and author of True Carrot Cake recipe, p. 210-213, “We Are La Cocina”
What is your most favorite meal? Can you picture it? What’s it smell like? Is it the flavors or textures that you love? Or is it associated with a particular memory? An occasion? A person? Food goes beyond our taste buds. It transcends the moment and makes a lasting impact on our hearts and souls. It’s the focal point of gatherings. It’s a story. It’s a whole culture. It’s life-giving, as sustenance, and, for some, as their livelihood. For the entrepreneurs of La Cocina, food is all of that, and this business serves as a literal incubator, inoculated with their talent, stories, and creativity, and bubbling out with multiplied recipes and success. It’s a microcosm of the San Francisco Bay Area, with its array of cuisines, ingredients, textures, aromas: all of the good things about food-- along with all of the frustrations of the food industry: sky high rent, expensive legal services, the scrolls of state and federal food safety regulations that are numerous and not always clear-cut, the challenges faced by those with lack of capital, the injustices faced by those with lack of citizenship or lack of political support and representation, and so on. La Cocina holds all of that within its walls, because despite all of that, or rather because all of that, La Cocina came to be. There is a demand for a more equitable food system, and La Cocina is doing its part (and flourishing) by providing inclusive and accessible business support. With its sparkling talents and vision of the chefs and the steadfast guidance of its support team, La Cocina is a business worth celebrating.
La Cocina is a non-profit incubator kitchen whose mission is to provide opportunities to talented entrepreneurs who face significant barriers to entering the food industry. They primarily support immigrants and women of color, by providing subsidized commercial kitchen space and hands-on, industry-specific technical assistance to transform talent into a profitable business. Caleb Zigas, Executive Director of La Cocina, writes in the Introduction of “We Are La Cocina”, that La Cocina was born out of San Francisco’s Mission District in the 1990s. Caleb helped launch its successful incubator program in 2005, and since then, La Cocina has incubated over 125 businesses; graduated over 55 entrepreneurs; and helped open 33 brick-and-mortar locations in the San Francisco Bay Area. La Cocina is providing a powerful opportunity for the entrepreneurs they work with to build capital, maintain ownership and representation of their cultural foods, care for themselves and their communities, and most importantly, take up space as immigrants and women in the food industry, where 77.4% of chefs and head cooks are men (Pew, 2019) and just 25% of C-suite restaurant executives are women (McKinsey, 2020); and within that industry still, exists a gender and racial wage gap. Equity in the food industry (and every industry) is long past due in the U.S., and La Cocina is helping to meet folks where they’re at so they can get where they deserve to be.
It goes without saying, that even without La Cocina, these women are successful in their own right. Cooperative action, mutual aid networks, and underground economies** (e.g. food labor outside of restaurants) have supported marginalized communities all throughout history. Despite recognition, and despite access to capital and reward for their innovation, immigrants and women of color have survived and thrived by their own means. They are the creators, the caregivers, the cooks, organizers, and artists who have been providing nourishment and flavor to those all around them, through food and beyond. Now they have the chance to amplify their voices and talents, with recognition on a national scale, and you can read all about them in the cookbook, “We Are La Cocina: Recipes in Pursuit of the American Dream”, By: Caleb Zigas & Leticia Landa; Photographs by Eric Wolfinger; Recipe Development by Yewande Komolafe.
K&M definitely recommends this cookbook (purchase here!), not just for the bangin’ Carrot Cake or Papusa recipes, but because it highlights the stories of the women behind the recipes. It’s a celebration of who they are, what they know, AND what they make. Purchasing this cookbook further supports La Cocina and helps them continue this necessary work! So go get that cookbook :) And spread the stories, joy, and flavors of these chefs with people in YOUR community!
**Radical Exchange just hosted a whole conference with the theme of “Underground Economies”. Follow Radical Exchange, and its founder, Ashtin Berry on Instagram for future learning opportunities.
