Chef Eduardo García: ‘Us Mexicans have this messed-up mentality that we work for the guy up top’

San José de las Pilas is a small rural settlement nestled in the mountains of Acámbaro, Guanajuato, located on the border of Michoacán’s Sierra Chincua. A cold mountain range for most of the year, it has been hit by a recent wave of violence. Amid its green landscape, summits appear to touch the sky, wet by rains that fall every day at dusk. Historically, its inhabitants have found only one way forward: northernly migration. They have no other option. One must leave the mountains and head to the United States to free oneself from poverty. Such is the recipe that locals have passed down from generation to generation.

So it was that Eduardo García, now 47, left his hometown when he was just nine years old. Along with his mother and brother, he set out for California, where his father, who had migrated many years before and who García had met only three times, waited for them. The little boy knew that the bricks he carried to help build their small house in the mountains had been paid for by the wages his father earned as a migrant worker. “I always saw him as a hero, even though I didn’t know him, because I knew that he was there, working for his family.”

Flash forward and it’s nine in the morning in Mexico City. The kitchen at Máximo is already in full swing. Five chickens sit in a tray, marinating in a blend of herbs. No one has a spare moment, everyone walks hurriedly, exchanging instructions and confirming task completions. Even though there are still five hours until the restaurant opens its doors, their shifts began at six in the morning. Chef García sits calmly at a table in the principal dining room. He asks for a strong, black coffee.

Conversation with García is different from a typical chat with a cook. It’s more like talking to an outlaw who has seen it all, and still has lots of road to travel. García expresses himself in Spanglish, with which he speaks of migration, poverty, pesticides in the growing fields, how to cross the border illegally, faith in God and the kitchen. His life is in many ways is that of the typical migrant who has had to sacrifice everything to succeed in the north — only, the journey was perhaps especially difficult for him, having had to start over several times from scratch to end up succeeding not in the United States, as one might expect, but rather, in Mexico.

He’d like to tell the story of how he traveled, hand-in hand with his mother, to California, but that would take “three days.” Instead, he prefers to speak of his hometown’s traditional bread, simply made and sweet-tasting, known as pan ranchero. García has a theory that the pastry is of German origin, thanks to a German settlement located in the area during Mexico’s post-independence era more than 200 years ago.

What doesn’t require three days of explanation is his description of the moment that young García realized he wasn’t in his little mountain town anymore. That was when he saw a Yoo-hoo chocolate drink at a California 7-Eleven. From then on, his life would be one of a Mexican immigrant seeking the American dream. He worked non-stop with his father, mother and brother in the fields. In Florida, they picked oranges. In southern Georgia, onions. In Ohio, there were cucumbers and in Michigan, apples. At 12 years old, he could already harvest as much as his father. They were paid at the majority of their agricultural jobs according to the volume of what each worker managed to pick. García is proud to say that he and his family were picking machines. His father unfolded a map on the hood of his car and followed Route 85 up and down the country, searching for fields where work was available. García spent 11 years like this, never able to finish his schooling or graduate.

One day, his father tired of seeing his wife and kids working such grueling shifts. In Florida, they had picked in temperatures that rose above 95 degrees and when they went to Pennsylvania for the mushroom harvest, they labored before the sun came up with the help of a flashlight in teeth-chattering cold and moisture. His father had managed to save some money and bring over his two sisters, who had stayed behind in their town in Guanajuato. Now that the family was complete, they settled in Atlanta. García, who was 16 years old by then, got a job washing dishes through a cousin in the kitchen of a small restaurant.

Question. Did you like your new job away from the fields?

Answer. I was a dishwashing pro. One day, my cousin quit out of the blue, and the chef told me, “Do you want to do your cousin’s job?” I told him that I did. I didn’t take it lightly. They moved me to the cold station to prepare salads. Later on, a Puerto Rican cook told me, “Hey, you’re really good. I work at another place, it’s the best restaurant in Atlanta. You should come.” That place turned out to be Chef Eric Ripert’s Brasserie Lecoz, one of the best in the country. He’s the same guy that started Le Bernardin, in New York.

Q. And they gave you a job?

A. At first, the chef didn’t want to. He said that I was a little boy. I went in with a fake ID, I didn’t have papers and I wasn’t old enough. I said, put me to work. And after two months, he called me and gave me the job. It was the first time I had seen a kitchen like that. Guys dressed in white with hats and their own sets of knives. Everyone with their own station and training. They said things like I went to France, I went to Spain, I spent four years in Tokyo and all that shit. I said, wow, what’s up with these guys. He stationed me in the garde manger, again, to make salads, but at a very high level. Rabbit terrine, pork paté, foie gras torchon, soups. I was best at soups and dressings. They made everything from scratch there.

Q. At some point, did you think that a kitchen like that wasn’t for you?

A. Never, never. I couldn’t have cared less about the gringos. In fact, after six months, they were asking me for help. My nickname was Fast Eddie. I started work at seven in the morning every day. My goddamn fingers were all cut up, every day I sliced one of my fingers, I’d put salt and vinegar on it and get back to work. And I worked from seven in the morning to two in the afternoon. Then I’d go to another job, where I worked until 11 o’clock at night. Just like that, every day.

Q. Was that how you learned to be a cook?

A. Yes and no. Because at that point, I was doing it to survive. I didn’t understand that I could be a cook. I had the mindset that most Mexicans have, that we have no potential to grow. That we are there to help others. That goddamn mentality that we have that we work for the guy up top.

Q. Still, you maintained that intensity.

A. I’m a worker ant, I learned everything, and I did everything very well. After six months they moved me to the next position, which was the hot station making appetizers and then they moved me to meats. I was there for three years and every six months they moved me to a new station or gave me more responsibilities. I wasn’t thinking about becoming a chef, but I did start thinking about getting my own beautiful set of knives, which I did eventually buy, and then I started thinking about going to Paris like the rest of them. You know, see the places that for me, had become legendary.

Q. Then what happened?

A. They put me in jail.

García was about to turn 19 and some friends from his neighborhood in Atlanta asked him to help them rob a store. Things got complicated and they were able to identify the Mustang that García had recently bought after his successful stint at the restaurant. A few days later, a detective showed up at his work, looked him in the eyes and warned him that he was a suspect. “Do the right thing,” he told him. The young kitchen apprentice spoke with his parents and decided to turn himself in. He spent four years in Georgia’s Smith State Prison.

When he got out, he was deported to Mexico because of his immigration status. He spent six months trying to make a life for himself in his childhood hometown. One afternoon, he got a call from his mother. His father had a very aggressive form of cancer. He didn’t hesitate, deciding to cross the border illegally once again. He wanted to see his father, but he also wanted to get back to his life in the United States.

Upon his arrival, he realized that his father would no longer be able to work and that his mother would have to take care of him, and so García set out to work and become the family’s breadwinner. He got a fake Social Security card and asked for a job at a restaurant from the Sedgwick Group, where he spent seven years climbing up the kitchen hierarchy. At one point, he was making $3,500 a week, beginning his daily shift at four in the morning. It was during these years that his son Máximo was born and that his father passed away. He continued to work diligently, for long hours at a time. Like many migrants in the United States, his routine was comprised of going from home to work, and then returning home to sleep. Until one day in 2007, when Jennifer Velásquez, the restaurant’s manager, came into the kitchen accompanied by three ICE agents. She said, “Eddie, they are here for you.”

Q. They deported you again?

A. They brought me downtown. I called the mother of my son to tell her what had happened and she said, “Don’t worry, I’ll bring your son to you.” The funny thing is, she disappeared. After I got to Mexico, I spoke with him five or six more times and haven’t heard from him since, to this day.

Q. You never saw your son again.

A. I’ve cried about it for 16 years and I can’t cry anymore. Nowadays I’m a person who works on positive and negative energies, because both exist. And there comes a time, if you fall, you either get up or you stay down. It’s been 16 years and I have never been able to talk about it without crying. But there comes a time when you have to carry on.

Q. How did your new life in Mexico begin?

A. I arrived in Mexico severely depressed because I was alone. All my family live in the United States. I arrived directly to the rancho after having been threatened that if I came back to the United States, they could send me to federal prison for 20 years. I spent two months being extremely sad until I told my mother I was going to Canada. I got my passport and bought a ticket to Toronto. When I landed at the [Toronto] airport, there were two guys who said “Eduardo García?” They grabbed me by the shirt, pulled it over my head and took me into a room. There, they said, “What are you doing in Canada?” They went through my luggage and said, “We’ve investigated you, you’re not a bad person, but you can’t come to Canada.” And they sent me back, that same night. I got back to my house at four in the morning. The next week, I went to Cabos [San Lucas, in Baja California] to look for work. I found a job at a really shitty hotel and I said, I don’t want to work here, this is not what I worked so hard for.

Q. But why Cabos?

A. Because there was a restaurant there with a chef I adored, Charlie Trotter. He was the best chef in the world in his day, in Chicago. The guy had a restaurant called ‘C’, at the One & Only Palmilla hotel. I went there every day, I’d stay for six hours, and they hated me. I spent my last fucking dollars to eat at that restaurant, to say to the manager, who was a Spaniard, “I see you have a vacancy, I have a good resume.” I left, I called him, but he never answered. Last year, they begged me and paid me to go, now they want to pay me to teach them things.

Q. Then what did you do?

A. I did a Google search for the best chef and the best restaurant in Mexico and Enrique Olvera came up every time. I called him, and he said, “Come in tomorrow.” And so, I went to Mexico City.

Q. You didn’t know Olvera at all?

A. It was the first time I’d met him. I told him straight up, I want to work in your restaurant. I called and asked for him, he answered the phone and gave me an appointment. My interview was with Ale Flores, the wife of Jorge Vallejo from Quintonil, who was Olvera’s assistant at that time. Afterwards Enrique came in and told me, “I want people like you.” I began to work with him.

Q. What did you say to convince him?

A. Nothing. I put on my resume that I had worked for Eric Ripert, because that was true, I had worked for him. I hadn’t worked at Le Bernardin, but I worked for him. And Olvera told me, “That guy was my idol when I graduated in New York.” And from that moment on, I worked for him for three years, and I met my wife Gaby [Gabriela López], who also worked for Enrique and in 2011, we set out on our dream, Máximo. We opened the restaurant with $400. Now we have 11 restaurants, each with their own brand. Our goal is to make people grow. We don’t have investment partners, our investments come from the project itself, all of our restaurants are owned by our employees or former employees who are partners now, and the money comes from their work. We don’t want to make people who already have money richer, we want to help those who need it.

Q. You no longer want to go back to the United States?

A. Well, no, because they won’t let me.

Translated by Caitlin Donohue.

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