And that can that.

Welcome to horizonte, a show that takes a look at current issues through a Hispanic lens?

I'm your host, Catherine Anaya.

She is an Arizona icon and chef whose influence reaches well beyond the kitchen.

Chef Silvana Sanz Esparza is a James Beard finalist and Arizona Culinary Hall of Fame inductee and activist, and founder of one of Arizona's most beloved restaurants.

She's also an author with a newly released memoir about her path to becoming a chef, as well as the challenges that she's faced both inside and outside the culinary world.

Chef Silvana, welcome to Arizona.

They're all just gracious.

So good to see you here.

See you as well.

This book, as I told you, I had a hard time putting it down because it is so rich in so many things, specifically, historically.

It is a candid blend of your experience, your ancestors experiences.

You come from a very long legacy of baking.

But back in your parents generation, you know, baking was a man's world, but you watched the women in your family break barriers.

So how did that influence you, your path, and your sense of possibilities?

I knew it was a man's world.

It was obvious by midday.

Go in the front.

Go take care of the bread.

Go take care of the customers.

But for me, the love, the fun, the party.

It was in the back.

You have to have that as a key ingredient to make good bread.

And then I also witness in a family's restaurant, the women cooking.

And it was my attraction to what I saw in that kitchen that took me that way.

But I knew that it was a patriarch is a man's world.

Yep.

With the woman's hand is so much better.

So you figured it out pretty early on.

I mean, you were working in your parent's bakery as young as six years old, and you saw them achieve success, but you also saw them face racism.

How did that influence you when you entered into your own career and started to experience some of the same things?

My career versus my parents, who were immigrants, and myself being a first generation born here, was different because they knew their place.

They were immigrants.

It was the 1960s.

They were opening for the first time a bakery in this small farming community.

I wanted to go where the big guys were at and break barriers, if you will.

I didn't think I was breaking barriers.

Instead, I thought they got the good stuff.

I want to be over there.

I feel like the Mexican food that I'm going to do deserves to be in their company.

White tablecloths my parents were selling to other Mexicanos, to the compassion those from the the laborers from the fields I was going to sell to the affluent.

And that's the difference.

But the struggle was equally as real.

They knew their place.

I didn't know my place.

And therefore I could feel the burden a little bit from.

Oh, you're on the list again because I did become a darling I do I do appreciate that ours of del and Arizona and Phoenix.

Yes.

You are beloved, you know.

And as much as I'm loved, I love back.

And that's that's that's my key right there as they were partying and having a good time and listening to canciones rancheras in the back, my, my uncles and my father in the bakery.

And I was enjoying the the love from the community and giving back.

That was a labor of love.

So that's the the vast difference.

But my privilege of being born here afforded me to not know my place.

And then maybe that's my problem.

Or maybe that's my recipe for success, is that I do not know my place.

If I see something, I like it.

I'm going to go after it.

Well, you did go after it because at some point early on in your childhood, you decided that baking was not going to be where your passion was.

It was going to be in a different area of the restaurant, so to speak.

What was it about the bakery that made you shift away from that specifically?

At one point when I lived in Miami, my father called me up and said, your uncle's going to sell the bakery in Delano.

I'll help you buy it.

Come.

And I said, you know, I'm a city girl.

I'm living and I'm living in Fort Lauderdale.

In Miami, I scuba dive.

I like exotic food.

I'm not going to get down in the little California.

I'm going to get campesinos, Cesar Chavez, legacies.

And I knew that wasn't for me.

Although the money was a calling, and I wanted to forge perhaps my own path and find out instead of using what they had given me their legacy in my own way.

I'm dyslexic, so I do everything different.

Well, everything different brought you to the iconic Barrio Cafe, which you opened in Phoenix in the early 2000.

You introduced many people to authentic Mexican cuisine, food that, as you write in your book, quote, has withstood colonization.

Can you explain what you mean by that and what you see as the appropriation of Mexican cuisine?

That is a definitely a multiple show question, a loaded one.

But the short answer would be that my cuisine is not authentic.

What I do is I take the privilege as the daughter of many ancestors who domesticated the corn that they own, seemingly.

I take that privilege, and it's a studied, educated, well-traveled chef, classically trained.

I mix it together, and I do what I call cocina, the outdoor kitchen.

And the author.

And that's what I do, because I feel like it would be a total, to say, authentic Mexican food.

It would be a total slap in the face of the truth.

Senora, as long as the senora who work in the fields here in the United States from the factories and go home and make a mall on Sunday to celebrate somebody's birthday.

I'm not that person.

I've become a historian and become a a child of these senoras who has studied them and been in their presence.

You know, I refer to them as goddesses, you know, gastronomic goddesses in the book.

And that's where my privilege comes in.

So I take it from a different perspective.

So did that influence, because I know that several network, networks came to you wanting to give you a show and you famously said, no.

Does that influence why you chose to turn down these offers?

You know, I was at the crossroads, whether it was with a a chain of restaurants that I created or TV shows.

Do I enter the machine to conglomerate?

It reminds me of WWE, you know, the wrestling.

Where they own your name.

And I didn't want to be owned by anybody.

So I chose integrity and instead.

And I talk about that in the book.

My mother my father, we would talk about integrity.

And so it's something I learned early on.

And I like to say I practice integrity now that I'm kind of at the exit or at the last of the last show.

I, I can say that I took the right roads.

Money was definitely not.

It was tempting.

It was there, but it wasn't for me.

Integrity is a very important word to you.

You've built a remarkable legacy here in Arizona.

Not just through your food, but through your activism, fighting for social justice, supporting artists, and giving muralists a platform to tell their stories.

Did that come at a personal cost for you?

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Lost of no more, darling.

Then that's okay.

You know, I'd rather be a warrior than a darling any day, my friend.

But, you know, with that came a loss of money opportunities.

That's okay.

You know what I love?

I love that I was at a park downtown feeding the unhoused.

And one of them told me, hey, you're that lady that has a mural over there, aren't you?

With holding a spoon.

And that's probably one of the moments I remember in my career.

The most, is that I stood feeding a homeless man that sat there and recognize me, and then ask me why.

Oh, I know why you're out here doing it.

And I'll take that over an Emmy Award for a show I didn't do any day.

I interviewed you.

I had the very distinct pleasure of being able to do that during, the Covid pandemic, when you were working tirelessly, like you talked about feeding the neighborhood, making sure that, you were feeding the community all while beginning the memoir and managing this incurable disease that you have been dealing with for quite a long time.

Was writing this book emotionally difficult for you?

No.

It took me 30 days to write the book.

It was so cathartic.

Everything came out so fast and in also tied those loose ends for me.

And you know, what I do now, for example, is only the next thing.

Right.

And there's always an answer for what the next thing is.

And that's what the book gave me those answers.

And also whatever I had to go through in business and need therapy for it.

The book was cathartic.

I, it was just there.

It needed to be done.

And it came out.

It poured out.

It's so well-written.

Thank you.

Very well-written.

And the fact that you did that in such a short amount of time is truly remarkable.

You opened the book by encouraging readers to approach your story with an open mind, open hearts, knowing that some of the themes might create discomfort and deep reflection.

How do you hope that readers ultimately, will take away from your story in terms of understanding, empathy, inspiration?

When you do a little research online and you find the five star book, a lot of them are from Anglo-Americans, European Americans in their responses.

I don't know.

You made me reflect.

Insightful because what I did is I opened up myself.

You know it's very violent.

I know what it is to be honest and be vocal also brings violence.

And I know that.

And I'm prepared for somebody to take offense with the book.

It's my life.

But it's your story.

It's my life.

And.

And you tell it so beautifully.

And like I said, it's rich with history.

We only have a couple of minutes, and I want to get to what you're doing now, because while you no longer run Barrio Cafe.

Your work is not done here in Arizona.

So tell me a little bit about what you're working on.

The publishing, the books, the school.

We need another show.

I'm I did I did a little workshop for 17 students for six weeks and chefs coats and everything.

Now it's turned into a school that I'm building in Mexico.

And I want to do that school here as well.

I'm publishing books.

I'm writing children's books as well.

You know, whatever is the next right thing to do is what I'm doing.

And the best part is, I don't have to run a business.

I could just create and give and be of service because I'm come from a place of love.

Listen, you can't cook spectacular Mexican cuisine if you don't have that gorgeous song.

Yes.

Rooted in that, where we come from, which is Mesoamerica.

And that's that's the truth.

So with love there's the book.

I hope everybody will read it with an open heart.

But it's my life.

It is your life.

And like I said you just write it so beautifully.

And there's so much history and so much to learn from your path and, and inspiration.

And I love the fact that you're publishing that you have this children's story coming out which is already written.

Right.

Oh, absolutely.

Yes.

Edit is the part.

That's the business part, Like running a restaurant that I don't like is the editing.

That takes a long time, but I'm learning to be patient.

Yes, it is a virtue.

Well, I appreciate you spending time with me.

Like you said, we could do a whole other show, and maybe we'll have to do that when the children's book comes out.

Absolutely.

I'd love to have you back once again.

I promise you, all my books will be banned, which most of the time means they're pretty darn good, right?

Thank you so much.

It's such a pleasure to see you.

And congratulations.

I encourage everyone to pick up the book, buy it, read it, inhale it like you are a food award winning book already.

So let's take that.

Yes.

Congratulations.

Thank you so much.

Great to see you.

And that's our show for Horizonte and Arizona PBS.

I'm Kathryn Aniya.

We'll see you next time at.

Way back when I.