{"id":18764,"date":"2023-06-24T10:17:05","date_gmt":"2023-06-24T17:17:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peninsula360press.com\/?p=18764"},"modified":"2023-06-24T10:21:06","modified_gmt":"2023-06-24T17:21:06","slug":"proud-to-be-mexican","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peninsula360press.com\/en\/proud-to-be-mexican\/","title":{"rendered":"Daniel, his international food and the pride of being Mexican"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo: Emily Morales P360P<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The chef arrived in the United States at 17 years old with the dream of buying a motorcycle, but plans changed along the way and now he fuses Mexican, Italian and Greek food.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

REDWOOD CITY. \u2013 Daniel S\u00e1nchez started as a taco maker in Mexico at age 13 and is now a chef who knows and fuses international dishes for his clients in the United States, both in his Mexican food truck and in his catering company.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1999, Daniel left his home in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, with the dream of buying a motorcycle to ride with his friends. However, after 24 years, he is still in the United States, where his home, his family, his career as an international chef, his business and his life are.<\/span><\/p>\n

Daniel's first encounter with cooking was in Mexico when he was a teenager and worked in a taco shop, where he felt "like he wasn't working" since serving diners brought him joy and relaxation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

"I felt relaxed when I was working and there were a lot of people around, I forgot about certain problems I had and I just relaxed and felt comfortable, I didn't feel like I was working," the Mexican chef recalled his days as a taco maker in Mexico.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That experience gave him the skill to use knives, a situation that benefited him at age 17, when he had been washing dishes for two weeks at a Bay Area restaurant and one of his bosses asked him to cover for a coworker; Daniel completed the task in less than 20 minutes, which surprised the manager, since his coworkers did it in more than an hour and a half.<\/span><\/p>\n

"Then they told me: 'Hey, you're not a dishwasher, you know how to use knives.' I was enthusiastic, I wasn't waiting for them to tell me what to do, I wanted to learn more," he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Within a few weeks of arriving in the United States, the Mexican was already in charge of preparing salads and learning how to make pizzas in his first job. Years passed and he became a cook, and then a chef: the person in charge of the kitchen, the menu, the cooks, and the creativity in the dishes.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The pride of being a Mexican chef<\/b><\/p>\n

Daniel said that he became so interested in the culinary field that he worked for more than 10 years without stopping, which gave him the experience to professionally cook Italian, Mexican, Greek, Japanese, Mediterranean, American food, among other dishes from around the world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He also confessed that he worked in around 12 different restaurants in the span of a year with the aim of learning about food and the techniques to prepare the dishes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

By acquiring knowledge empirically, Chef S\u00e1nchez said that he became in charge of several kitchens and projects, in addition to starting his own <\/span>catering business <\/span><\/a>in his spare time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

"I worked so hard that those who had gone to chef school didn't know what I knew," he said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He added that around 2000, there were not so many Latinos in charge of kitchens, so he felt very proud to be a Mexican chef.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Daniel believes that migrants, especially Latinos, have fewer opportunities to be assigned to high-ranking positions, so he called on the community to prepare and "do better than others."<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00abThings sometimes seem like they are not so easy, but you have to insist and keep going, you have to prepare yourself as much as you can in the area you are working in and when they open a door for you, force that door. Even if you are tired, keep going and keep going; and even if you feel like you are not going anywhere, you will get there, little by little.\u00bb<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

The chef also admitted that when he travels to Mexico he likes to eat at street stalls "because they create flavor so quickly and I think that's one of the things I've learned, that you don't need a really fancy or big restaurant; if you know how to cook and balance flavors, you can make delicious food and I really like that."<\/span><\/p>\n