A young Mexican American chef won a prestigious award in the event that is considered the culinary Oscars.
Ana Liz Pulido, owner of Ana Liz Taqueria, won a James Beard Award for best chef in Texas at the James Beard Foundation awards ceremony Monday.
Pulido gave her acceptance speech half in English and half in Spanish, expressing how honored she felt to represent the Texas borderlands and finishing her speech by exclaiming, “¡Viva Mexico!”
“I’m so grateful and honored to represent the Rio Grande Valley,” she said. “We are a small town in South Texas, just minutes from the border of Mexico.”
The taquería holds only five tables. However, in an interview with Eater Austin, Pulido said she recently acquired the space next door, which she plans to use to expand the restaurant.
Its small menu, including a chile relleno taco and chef-recommended espadas, is influenced by Pulido’s travels to Mexico.
Texas Monthly credited the success of the restaurant, a “pilgrimage-worthy spot,” to the chef’s homemade tortillas. After losing her corn tortilla supplier, a tortilleria that nixtamalized its corn to soften it and boost its nutrition, Pulido learned how to make the tortillas herself.
These from-scratch tortillas make her food both unique and simply made, Pulido told ValleyCentral last year. “It’s organic, it doesn’t have GMOs. It’s just calcium, water, and corn,” she said.
Her flour tortillas, however, are made by her mother. Pulido’s business has always been a family affair, according to Texas Monthly. As a teenager, Pulido was inspired by her father's taquerías in Mexico and eventually began to sell her own snacks, chamoyadas and loaded tortilla chips next to one of them. Her father was the first person she thanked onstage when she won the award.
Last year, Pulido was a semifinalist in the same category, only two years after opening Ana Liz Taqueria in 2021.
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