Zarela Martinez

Coming Up

Training at ITESO in Guadalajara, Jalisco gave Zarela Martinez formal grounding before she moved into the working side of the trade. She then learned the business side of the kitchen as a cook at family training from mother Aida Gabilondo, a formation that shaped both standards and inheritance. In 1979, she became a catering business owner at El Paso in Texas, gaining early command of the organization, flexibility, and consistency that catering demands. In New York, Zarela Martinez served as consulting chef and limited partner at Café Marimba in New York, then became restaurateur at Zarela in New York City (1987–2011). The restaurant became closely associated with a serious, articulate approach to Mexican cooking in a city that often reduced it to shorthand. In 2001, she expanded again as restaurateur at Danzon, carrying the same precision into another setting while continuing to shape how regional Mexican food could be presented, understood, and respected. Zarela Martinez is also catering business owner of Zarela Catering (since 1983), a board member of Mexican Cultural Institute of New York, and a cookbook author. Across those roles, her work stays fixed on the idea that a dish can be both personal and historically grounded, intimate and exacting.

Where They Are Now

The books do not simply reproduce recipes; they carry intention, context, and a clear effort to place the food where it belongs. "In my cookbooks, I set the food in a cultural context."

Signature

Zarela's signature dishes include Zarela, Food from My Heart, The Food and Life of Oaxaca, Zarela's Veracruz, and camarones enchipotlados. Taken together, these titles map the scope of the work: regional specificity, memory, and a way of writing about cuisine that treats each tradition as living, distinct, and worth exact description.

In Their Words “In my cookbooks, I set the food in a cultural context.”

Honors

Zarela's honors include Who's Who of American Food Professionals and Best International Book of the Year for Food from My Heart: Cuisines of Mexico Remembered and Reimagined (nominated).