El Chef Migrante: La Vida Y Los Tiempos de Lalo García / The Migrant Chef: The Life and Times of Lalo García [Spanish]

By Laura Tillman

El chef migrante desvela la extraordinaria vida de Lalo Garc a, un migrante que pas de los campos agr colas al Olimpo de la gastronom a mundial.

Cuando era ni o, Lalo tuvo que trabajar en condiciones «agotadoras, mugrientas y venenosas en Estados Unidos... Sin formaci n acad mica ni grandes recursos, su innato talento y f rrea tica de trabajo le empezaron a abrir paso en el mundo
que le apasionaba: el de los restaurantes... Pero todo se interrumpi cuando fue deportado a M xico, un pa s que debi redescubrir y donde tuvo que empezar de cero. De nuevo.

Lo hizo a lo grande. En ese proceso, se propuso redefinir la alta cocina y su propio destino.

Junto a su socia y esposa, Gaby L pez Cruz, Lalo fund M ximo Bistrot Local en la Ciudad de M xico, un restaurante que ha sido nombrado uno de los cien mejores del mundo.

Desde ah confront la desigualdad y cimbr el panorama culinario buscando hacer una cocina de autor, con ingredientes realmente sustentables, transformando la adversidad en un motor de cambio.

Laura Tillman, tras cinco a os de reportaje inmersivo y cientos de horas en la cocina de M ximo, nos ofrece una mirada ntima al complejo mundo interior de Lalo, sus ansiedades, su inspiraci n y su constante b squeda de prop sito y plenitud.
He aqu la historia de un «simple cocinero que, d a a d a,
nos invita a disfrutar un imperio de sabores.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

Winner of the 2024 James Beard Foundation's Award for Literary Writing

A New Yorker Best Book of 2023 - An NPR 2023 "Books We Love" Pick

A chef's gripping quest to reconcile his childhood experiences as a migrant farmworker with the rarefied world of fine dining.

Born in rural Mexico, Eduardo "Lalo" Garc a Guzm n and his family left for the United States when he was a child, picking fruits and vegetables on the migrant route from Florida to Michigan. He worked in Atlanta restaurants as a teenager before being convicted of a robbery, incarcerated, and eventually deported. Lalo landed in Mexico City as a new generation of chefs was questioning the hierarchies that had historically privileged European cuisine in elite spaces. At his acclaimed restaurant, M ximo Bistrot, he began to craft food that narrated his memories and hopes.

Mexico City-based journalist Laura Tillman spent five years immersively reporting on Lalo's story: from M ximo's kitchen to the onion fields of Vidalia, Georgia, to Dubai's first high-end Mexican restaurant, to Lalo's hometown of San Jos de las Pilas. What emerges is a moving portrait of Lalo's struggle to find authenticity in an industry built on the very inequalities that drove his family to leave their home, and of the artistic process as Lalo calls on the experiences of his life to create transcendent cuisine. The Migrant Chef offers an unforgettable window into a family's border-eclipsing dreams, Mexico's culinary heritage, and the making of a chef.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: Spanish
• ISBN: 6073855842
• ISBN13: 9786073855846
• Release Date: February 2026
• Publisher: Grijalbo
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.81 lbs.