Schneider mentioned the importance of corn and pork in Michoacan, moles from Oaxaca, pibil pork and achiote from Yucatan. There was spaghetti and red sauce,” she said. She expects to see regional Mexican food grow in popularity. In the south they eat a ton of fruit, in the north a lot of meat,” Schneider explained. “They eat a lot of soups and stews, guisados.
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“Once you understand how to use chiles, you can mess around with them.” Going to Mexico is going to the mother lode, experiencing the way salsas are supposed to taste,” she said. “The flavors are real inspiration for me. Recently returned from a two-week tour of Mexico sponsored by the Mexican government and led by Patricia Quintana, Schneider found more food to love. When I make a salsa I take it to them and ask what they think.” “I’ve worked with Mexican men since 1985. Schneider credits her crew as inspiration for new dishes. Her best advice to others? “Show up, suit up, shut up and do your best.”
“People told me to get the hell out of the business,” Schneider remarked. Women in the kitchen are a common sight now but 30 years ago not so much. Schneider cooked at several restaurants and hotels in and around San Diego including the La Jolla Torrey Pines Hilton where she became executive chef, the first female in the company to hold that position.īeing a female in a male-dominated industry has never bothered Schneider. Chef continues to visit Tijuana, just over the border, to shop and eat and the food at those stands up and down the coast of Baja became the inspiration for her books and the menu at SOL Cocina – Newport Beach.
San Diego, conveniently close to Mexico and Schneider’s work led her to travel extensively in Mexico where she discovered the food at street stands. Before moving to San Diego, she stayed on the water as a yacht chef in Florida and the Caribbean. “My boyfriend was a marine electrician,” Schneider recalled and he got her into cooking for owners and guests sailing around Europe where she explored France, Spain, Italy, Greece and North Africa between jobs on a BMW motorcycle. Her first cooking jobs were on luxury yachts. I had to make stock, pastry shells and more. One sweetbread recipe took me three days. And, “I taught myself to cook through Julia (Child). She did six months of intense hands-on training at a Cordon Bleu school in Toronto. However, “I hate office work and love food,” she said about switching to cooking. Petite in stature, author and teacher, was executive editor for a publishing house in Toronto. This long time Mexican food enthusiast has published four books on the subject and will soon begin a fifth.
Her Baja-style street tacos are the biggest sellers on her menu. Although it’s become a cliché to label food freshly made, the aromas alone of the homemade tortillas is a journey to the land of corn. That’s not how they eat down there,” she said.Ĭhef describes her food at SOL Cocina – Newport Beach as Cabo or Sinaloan style. What Executive Chef/Partner Deborah Schneider calls “the death hubcap of sludge” refers to the deep-fried, cheese-covered, red sauce-loaded dishes of tacos, burritos, fajitas and enchiladas served everywhere. Authentic Mexican flavor with some twists sets SOL Cocina – Newport Beach apart from the fare served in most restaurants.
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