72 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {food coloring} Amado, a stylish new restaurant in Burlingame, reads like a love letter to Mexico’s many states. Like a vibrant patchwork quilt greater than the sum of its parts, chef Gloria Dominguez’s menu captures the kaleidoscope of her birth country’s cuisine. She has traveled far and wide, gleaning knowledge of regional dishes and prized ingredients from across the nation. On her quest, Gloria has ventured to vibrant Puebla where she learned to make chiles en nogada, a dish of warm spices and tender meat, as well as mole manchamanteles (a deep red stew with chiles and tropical fruit that literally translates to “tablecloth stainer”). She also journeyed south, observing the traditional underground cooking process of cochinita pibil (tender, succulent pork) in the Yucatán, handling football-sized cacao beans in Tabasco and learning the seven splendid moles of Oaxaca. “I love to make moles,” Gloria declares of the complex sauce. “The flavors just transport me to my childhood.” Even the pottery is welltraveled here. Amado’s plates hail from Taller Ruíz López, a little shop in Oaxaca where fifth-generation potters uphold traditional practices of Zapotec ceramic making. Take a moment to appreciate the dish beneath your meal and imagine the woman who extracted its clay from a mountainside with a pickaxe before shaping it into its final form. “I'm always wanting to learn,
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