Chef Natalia Vallejo: ‘Food Sovereignty Is The Way Forward’

A James Beard award-winning Puerto Rican chef explains what that means to her.

Raised in the mountain town of Cayey, Puerto Rico, James Beard award-winning chef Natalia Vallejo carries the memories of the women of her family preparing traditional meals over an open fire to feed people. Those memories inspire cuisine at her restaurant Cocina al Fondo in San Juan, which puts a modern and global lens on traditional Puerto Rican ingredients by combining history with the future. Dishes like mofongo, hen soup and fritura (fried food) aren’t unique to Puerto Rican households. Still, she made it her own, taking her lived experiences studying and working in South America, Europe and Latin America. In this Voices in Food story, Vallejo shares how significant it is to be the first James Beard chef from her country, the importance of the agroecological farmers’ movement and her role in it, and what she thinks in the future of Puerto Rico’s food scene.

On how she started her culinary career

While I was studying at the University of Puerto Rico, I did a student exchange program with the University of Madrid for six months. There, I discovered the world of food and fish markets. I cooked for myself and my roommates, and it was there that I discovered my passion for cooking.

After I returned to Puerto Rico from my student exchange program with the university, I decided not to continue studying nutrition, and that is when I decided to study cooking. I went to the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and studied at the Gato Dumas and Mausi Sebess schools.

On being Puerto Rico’s first James Beard winner