Angélica Ortiz

The Path

Political science and social research formed the first discipline in Ortiz’s working life. In Medellín, Colombia, she worked in a social research role focused on women’s rights, leading a team of 300 people at Medellín mayor’s office in Medellín, Colombia. The work required responsibility at scale: systems, people, and the slow mechanics of social change. Restaurant craft gave Ortiz a more immediate material field. A fish to fillet, a sauce to watch, a fire to understand, a plate to finish: the work moved questions out of abstraction and into hand, eye, timing, and repetition. A kitchen role at Oxomoco in Brooklyn, New York, placed her inside the daily structure of prep, service, pressure, and precision. Fine dining training widened that field internationally. Ortiz went on to intern at El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, Spain (2026), entering an exacting culinary environment and extending her exposure to restaurant discipline. From 2026, she continues as an intern at SingleThread in Healdsburg, California, carrying the same research habit into the material language of food.

The Work Today

The cooking at Oxomoco in Brooklyn, New York, now holds two forms of practice together: the immediate demands of the kitchen and the broader questions that shaped Ortiz’s earlier work. Technique, service, and repetition sit beside concerns of memory, access, and cultural knowledge. The stated future project is a fine dining restaurant in Colombia that is accessible to locals, rooted in research, and centered on traditional food knowledge. In that aim, refinement is not separate from relevance. The restaurant idea depends on study as much as execution, and on local access as part of the hospitality model. Research remains part of the method. Political science and social research inform the way Ortiz frames food, access, and cultural memory, without separating those questions from the craft itself. The kitchen becomes another place of inquiry: ingredients handled with care, inherited knowledge preserved, questioned, and made visible through service.

In Their Words “In the kitchen, I have a fish and I have to fillet it and make something with it. I came to love that feeling of simple achievement, of engaging with the material world.” “Politics is a tough field and I knew I needed a change which would allow me to engage with my creative and sensitive side more.”

Recognition

Angélica Ortiz has received The World's 50 Best Restaurants / Parmigiano Reggiano: 50 Best Restaurants Scholarship (2025).