When I opened Amparo Fondita, I didn’t want to build a restaurant, I wanted to build a movement. A living, breathing space that used food to shift power, restore dignity, and reframe what it means to be a Latin American person working in hospitality. Amparo means shelter, but not
November is Mental Health Month, something I used to roll my eyes at. For years, I thought mental health was a luxury or something for people who had time (and money) to take breaks, go to therapy, light a candle, breathe. In the restaurant world, you don’t get to
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about home — not the kind you can find on a map, or the building where you keep all of your shit. Rather, the kind that lives under your skin. The kind that shifts, expands, and sometimes hides from you. I was born in
Amparo just hit its two-year mark. Three if you count the year of build-out. Two years of excitement, fear, heartbreak, survival, and grace. I stopped for a moment this week — like, truly stopped — and tried to take it in. What’s happened, what hasn’t. The wins, the stumbles, the
A lot of these things I’m writing are heavily prompted by my day-to-day interactions with my team and topics they trigger through conversation and sometimes just by me watching them work. They really are everything.Everyone loves to call the restaurant a family. It sounds noble — a band of
I used to think meeting your heroes was the thing that would change you — that shaking the hand of the chef whose food made you feel funny…down there, or finally getting yelled at in that kitchen and rubbing shoulders with those cooks, would somehow baptize you in purpose and
There was a stretch of time last year when I stopped being the first to show up — not physically, but in spirit. The team would be prepping, orders flying, service humming, and I’d arrive just in time to plug into something already in motion. On paper, that’s what
There’s a particular kind of quiet that only happens in a restaurant kitchen after the last plate goes out and the last guest leaves — Quiet. Not peace. Never peace. More like the silence of something that’s been wrung dry — bodies, minds, towels, pans, patience. The stainless steel still
The truth is, I didn’t plan to write this — at least not now, though I think about it more often than not and just can’t seem to put pen to paper — or screen, as it were. I planned to cook, to lead, to feed — to build a restaurant
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