74 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {food coloring} into warm, yellow discs. Growing up under her grandmother’s culinary tutelage, Gloria inherited a partiality to doling out spices with pinches rather than measuring spoons. “She said, ‘a pizca this and a pizca that,’” recounts Gloria—who prefers to do the same, dialoguing with the dish, then adjusting to taste. After immigrating to the U.S. as a teen, Gloria found herself chasing the nostalgic flavors of her childhood. She opened her first restaurant in the late 1980s, hoping that her dishes would help “transport people” back to the places they missed most. More than three decades later, she remains as devoted to her craft as ever. Her last concept, Oakland’s Tamarindo Antojeria, elevated Mexican street bites over its 14-year run. It’s where Amado’s owner Francisco Perez first fell in love with Gloria’s cooking. Fittingly, Gloria’s restaurant is a family endeavor. One of her you know? It's a never-ending story,” Gloria says of her far-flung travels. Her Instagram attests to this. Her profile is punctuated with photos and videos of her lessons with village women in open-air kitchens, their traditional dresses embroidered with flowers. Gloria is right beside them, a colorful bandana holding back her hair, sleeves rolled and hands ready. “Every home in Mexico has their own recipe,” she notes. Naturally, Gloria's menu pays tribute to her own roots. “I'm from the state of Jalisco,” she says. You will find both torta ahogadas (carnitas on a baguette, “drowned in a hot salsa”) as well as jericalla (the Mexican creme brûlée) for which the region is known. “I was pretty much always around food,” Gloria says of her childhood growing up on a farm. “I was always with my grandma grinding the corn, making the tortillas, helping her cook.” In keeping with that tradition, Amado makes their tortillas in-house, grinding heirloom corn sourced from Masienda and pressing it
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTcxMjMwNg==