Today we’d like to introduce you to Sergio Garcia Manriquez.
Sergio, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I was raised in a household where scratch-cooked food from Michoacan Mexico was what we lived. My family lives in Watsonville Ca, a super farm town and very densely populated Mexican farm laborer community. However Watsonville also has a Filipino, Croatian, Japanese, and Portuguese influence and I always remembered the food and flavors that was so different at times, but also very familiar. Luckily, my family stayed rooted to Michoacan, so I was able to see, taste, smell, touch, and feel the food from where my inspiration comes from.
My childhood had low riders, bull riding, United Farm Workers Strikes, Holy Week processions, Snickers vs. Mazapan, Mexican Chips and sodas versus American ones… I relish my bi-national experience. Being here in California I am witnessing how the Mexican Rooted foods are getting modified due to all the beautiful cultures that inhabit California. I am heavily influenced by my grandmothers, Tias, Tios and family friends that were my culinary teachers. My major was International Business with an emphasizes in Latin American commerce.
Its been an interesting journey how it went from alcohol distribution, academic adviser, wind turbine technician, professor, to now, producing nourishment. My families intention of eating has always one of nourishment. As I went throughout my journey, I was given signs with regards to foods, ingredients, sickness, discovery of healing food practices among other things. For a while now, I was cooking more consciously for myself. However, the curiosity to take this on as a profession led me to a commercial kitchen in 2008, where I started as a dishwasher.
Since then, I have been on a mission to absorb as much food knowledge as I can since then, working in a variety of multi-ethnic restaurants. I was blessed with an opportunity to commandeer my own creative menu as the executive chef, and that was when I was witnessing that people were really enjoying my food creations. However, I felt that I still was not fully expressing my memories, so I resigned as Exec Chef. With the awesome guidance of my colleagues, I branched out to create Dos Tierras “A Chicano Soul Food Project” in 2018. But the food palate food memories have existed for as long as I can taste.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Never smooth sailing for anyone, as anything worth having always comes with some struggles. However, I admit that because I truly enjoy what is being put together, the struggles come as challenges to be overcome.
Some of my struggles have been:
-Funding
Creating and cementing the identity of this project
-Organizing my recipes
-Creating the structure and protocol for my unique business model
-Suppliers
-Working with Mexican parts on my carts and not having accessibility to them
-Finding a commercial kitchen
-Knowing how to properly charge for services
-Confidence in ones one ability and also knowing when to ask for help
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Dos Tierras story. Tell us more about the business.
I am a mobile caterer. I have specially fabricated “Street Carts” or Carros de Guiso that I move around in San Diego. I first emerged into the scene in 2016 as a Pop- up at Por Vida in Barrio Logan. I have since then kept that same model while expanding into catering services that do events such as weddings, birthdays, corporate functions, anniversaries, school functions, etc. We also do special dinners that take us out of our traditional catering fare into more complex rooted plated dishes for dinner parties.
Dos Tierras also does food education in our community, and we also do menu and restaurant consulting. When I created this business, I made myself a promise to always offer vegan options, as this has given us a nice niche market. We also include those with specific preference or dietary restrictions. Our attention to this has been a big variable in how we create our menu items. This type of conscious awareness is not always the case with food in general.
We are in a class all its own as we feature braised or stewed interpretations of old world Mexico recipes from my family and many other wonderful cooks of Michoacan, Braises such as Salsa Verde chicken, Pork Birria, Picadillo, to our vegan options like Mushroom Ranchero and Lentils in a Pipian Rojo. Our vegan and “Campesino Food” is unique in my sense because I have taken treasured Mexican ingredients by identities like corn, beans, and chiles that have been given California ingredients to play with.
I use ingredients such as cactus, a variety of chiles, beans, chorizo, Enoki Mushrooms, truffles oil, pineapple vinegar, and many more ingredients that are not applied in most of the Mexican food in San Diego. We also make the corn tortillas from scratch and have my flour tortillas hand made as well. This scratch-cooked, rooted food with touches of other cultures is unique to us only our cultural projects business model is able to create a rooted, “gourmet,” nutritionally dense food experience with one that doesn’t purge the wallets of our beloved guests.
We also take this knowledge with us into the communities and schools we serve. Our project is a preservation method of sorts and people, especially of color, appreciate us. This is what we are the most proud of.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
It may seem odd, but I do not believe in good or bad luck as I believe that things happen because they are meant to. I was taught early on that hard and diligent works beats out luck. We just feel lucky that we are able to share our humble project and our rooted food.
We feel lucky that people are really embracing our concept and that the flavors bring food memories to some. If I had to change anything it would be probably where I started this business. I have been on my own in San Diego for 17 years, and although I had good support from close friends, it was a crazy struggle to do this thing practically on my own.
Maybe if I created this project in Watsonville, I would have more help from my family and friends in a familiar town. In hindsight, I would have saved some money first for a cushion, but I went all instead lol
Contact Info:
- Website: chicanosoulfood.com
- Phone: (760) 651-6195
- Email: info@chicanosoulfood.com
Getting in touch: SDVoyager is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
