Santiago Gomez

The Climb

The climb in Santiago Gomez’s career runs through finance before it settles in the dining room. He worked as an investment banker at UBS in New York, then moved closer to restaurants and the operational side of hospitality. That shift matters: it gives his path the perspective of someone who knows how kitchens sit inside larger businesses, and how discipline translates across industries. The sequence that includes Daniel, NOBU, Cantina La Veinte, and Tacology Miami maps a working knowledge of contemporary dining across different rooms and cities. Those stops, along with his time at Cosme as managing partner, place Gomez inside the larger conversation around Contemporary Mexican cuisine without separating him from the day-to-day labor that conversation requires. His career is cumulative rather than theatrical: each role adds another layer to a vocabulary he would later use on his own terms.

Today

Since 2022, Gomez has been chef at Palo Santo in Atlanta, a supper club-style restaurant and rooftop where Contemporary Mexican cuisine meets Georgia ingredients. The format asks for range: a kitchen has to hold the room, the view, and the pace of service at once. Within that setting, his cooking stays tied to modern Mexican technique while making room for the local context around it. In 2023, he Co-created Botanico Hospitality Group in Atlanta, extending the work beyond a single restaurant and into the structure that supports one. That move points to a broader understanding of hospitality as an operating system, not just a menu. That line matches the way his work reads overall: direct, practical, and centered on the craft itself. The principle he names—cook with love—lands as an operating rule rather than a slogan, a way of keeping the work grounded as the business around it expands.

In Their Words “I decided it was time for me to shift and start my own restaurant.”

Recognition

Recognition for Santiago Gomez sits in the network of kitchens, companies, and schools that shaped his work. Daniel, NOBU, Cantina La Veinte, Tacology Miami, Palo Santo, and Botanico Hospitality Group mark the span of that path, while the progression from culinary study in Mexico City to Universidad Iberoamericana and Harvard University gives it structure. Across New York, Miami, and Atlanta, the through line is Contemporary Mexican cuisine treated as a working language: specific, practiced, and now anchored at Palo Santo.