Gabriel and Luisa Garcia:
Catering veterans and Project Feast graduates, 2021
“Now, I know I can cook food for 200, 300 people.”
Gabriel and Luisa Garcia have been partners in life and in catering businesses for years. When the pandemic shut down their jobs for 2020, they saw Project Feast as an opportunity to learn the cooking side of catering – and invest in their future.
When Gabriel Garcia was assigned to cook his first family meal at Project Feast, he chose pollo guisado: chicken braised in a sauce rich with tomatoes, garlic, onion, roasted guajillo chiles and childhood memories.
“We didn’t have a blender, so my mom used a stone metate to make the sauce for the chicken,” he says. Grinding the ingredients made her work up a sweat. “After that, she’d make fresh tortillas.”
Pollo guisado is a popular celebration dinner at weddings around Gabriel’s hometown of Guatemala City, but he had never made it. Before the family meal, he had just two weeks to learn his mom’s recipe and lead a kitchen team to make the dish for more than 100 people.
This challenge was exactly the experience Gabriel and his wife, Luisa, wanted when they enrolled in the Project Feast apprenticeship in fall 2020. They were veterans of Seattle’s catering scene, working together for years to put on large events for tech companies like Google and Facebook and manage the logistics for elegant destination weddings. But they had little experience cooking at events. When the coronavirus pandemic canceled their catering jobs for the year, Gabriel and Luisa decided to use the time to invest in themselves and their future business goals.
“I came to Project Feast to learn more about the kitchen, to use my time doing something,” Luisa says.
“I’m here because I want to open my own catering business,” Gabriel says. “I know pretty much everything about it, but I want to see how it works back in the kitchen. I want to feel it. I want to have this experience.”
As he prepared for the pollo guisado family meal, “I was very nervous,” Gabriel says. “But he handled it very well,” Luisa interrupts. “He had very good ideas in the kitchen for how to do it better.”
“I’ve worked in catering companies for many years, as a bartender, as a server, in the back of the house, the front of the house, managing everything,” Gabriel says. “But never in the kitchen. It’s a different kind of stress.” In the past, Gabriel had a business partner who managed the food preparation. “Next time, I’m going to have my own business with everything.”
Starting their own catering business after the pandemic will be challenging, but Gabriel and Luisa have overcome bigger obstacles in the past – including those they faced on their separate journeys to the Seattle area. When Luisa left her small town in the Mexican state of Guanajuato in 2003, she worked long hours in California produce fields for a year before following her sister to the Northwest. When Gabriel left Guatemala, he first settled in New Mexico. He moved to Seattle in 2005 for better job opportunities – only to find himself abandoned at the bus station by the friend who had promised to pick him up. Without his local contact, Gabriel struggled to find a place to stay, a job, even to have enough to eat day to day.
Gabriel and Luisa met soon after he arrived, when she was working as a cashier at the 3 Hermanos store where he bought prepaid phone cards. By then, he had found a job, but still needed a place to live. One day, he thought to ask her if she knew anyone with rooms to rent. He was about to give up and move to New York when Luisa came up with a connection who had a room. Finally, Gabriel had a job and a place to live. And a good friend.
But the two of them say it took time for their friendship to turn to love:
Gabriel: “A few weeks later, I stopped again in the store to say thank you. I invited her to have dinner – not a date – to thank her for that huge favor, and she said no.”
Luisa: “At that time, I had a boyfriend in Mexico. I know in America, you can go and have dinner with a friend, but in Mexico, no. So, that’s why I said no.”
Gabriel: “And then I found a job in a taco truck. So, every day I stopped at the store where she worked and I gave her food. We started up a very good relationship.”
Luisa: “As a friend.”
Gabriel: “I never had intentions to say something to her. Yes, I thought she was a beautiful woman. I didn’t think that I had a chance for her to have a date with me. Every day, I would stop there, talk to her a little bit.”
And then one day, when he stopped by the store, Luisa asked him if he would teach her to drive.
Gabriel: “Well, sure, why not? So, that day I invited her for breakfast and this was how we started. And then after, I guess, 16 years, we’re still together. Now, we have three kids.”
Luisa: “He was not a person that I’m looking for, but he was very nice. He has a really good heart. I am convinced that love is blind. Because before, I didn’t think of him as really handsome. After that, I thought him really handsome!”
Gabriel: “I never gave up. I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t met her.”
Over the years, both of them began working in catering. By 2013, Gabriel was working a lot – often seven days a week. “With the events I’d come home at 2 o’clock in the morning and then at 8 o’clock in the morning I’d be ready to go on another event,” he says. “I sacrificed my family a lot. I remember in 2013, Luisa told me, ‘OK, do you want your job? Or do you want your family?’”
But they had a goal driving them: “Everyone told me, In this country no one buys their house in cash,” Gabriel says. “This is my dream. I’m going to do it.”
“It was so hard because my son would ask for things and I would have to say, ‘We have money, but it is for the house,’” Luisa says.
They worked a whirlwind of fundraisers and events throughout 2018 and 2019. “We made our dream come true,” Gabriel says. “Now, we’re so glad because in this pandemic, there are no events, there are no jobs. We are blessed because we don’t need to pay rent.”
Their financial stability allowed Gabriel and Luisa to focus on gaining kitchen skills during their Project Feast apprenticeship. They learned how to make one of their family’s favorite restaurant dishes – pho – and how to scale recipes to feed large numbers of diners. “I learned how to use a knife because I always use it wrong,” Luisa says. “And how to work as a team,” Gabriel adds.
Gabriel will apply these Project Feast experiences to their next catering venture, a business he plans to call Events y Mas: “Now, I know I can cook food for 200, 300 people,” Gabriel says. “Before, I had managed events for 300 people, but for cooking, I had no idea.”
“Maybe I’m not going to be back in the kitchen cooking the food,” he says. “But now, when I hire somebody else, I can teach the person.”
Interview and writing by Denise Clifton, Tandemvines Media
Costillas de Puerco en Salsa Verde (Pork Ribs in Green Sauce)
Ingredients
- 4 lbs pork ribs
- 4 garlic cloves
- 4 jalapeño peppers
- 10 green tomatillos
- 1 medium yellow onion
- 1 cilantro bunch
- 4 bay leaves
- Salt to taste
Instructions
Make the sauce
- 1. Place the tomatillos in a pan, cover with cold water, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook the tomatillos until soft (about 20 minutes).
- 2. Drain the tomatillos and add to a blender along with ½ the onion, 2 cloves of garlic, jalapenos, and cilantro (leaves and stems). Blend until smooth.
Make the ribs
- 1. In another pot, place the ribs along with the remaining ½ onion, 2 garlic cloves and the bay leaves. Bring to a boil and then lower to a simmer. Simmer the ribs until tender (about 1 hour).
- 2. When the ribs are tender, remove from the water and pan fry in a little oil over high heat until they are golden brown. Add the tomatillo sauce to the pan and simmer for another 25 minutes. Season with salt to taste.
- Serves 8
Pollo Guisado (Stewed Chicken)
Ingredients
- 4 lbs. chicken, cut into 8 oz. pieces
- 3 tbsp oil
- 1 ½ tsp thyme powder
- 3 bay leaves
- 4 garlic cloves
- 1 medium onion
- 10 medium tomatoes
- 5 medium tomatillos
- 2 dried Japanese chiles
- ½ dried guajillo chiles
- ½ dried pasilla chiles
- ½ pan francés guatemalteco (Guatemalan bread) or ½ a baguette
- ½ cup water
- 2 large carrots, cut into ½” pieces
- 3 large potatoes, cut into ½” pieces
- Salt to taste
Instructions
- 1. Soak the bread in ½ cup of water.
- 2. Char the tomatoes, tomatillos, onion and garlic either on a grill or with a broiler. Toast the dried chiles in a pan over high heat.
- 3. Add the soaked bread to a blender along with the charred vegetables and toasted chiles. Blend until smooth and add salt to taste.
- 4. Heat the oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add the chicken and brown on all sides. Add the bay leaves, thyme powder and a pinch of salt. Cook for 5 more minutes.
- 5. Add the sauce, carrots and potatoes to the pot and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes until the chicken is cooked through and the vegetables are tender.
- Serve with white rice and corn tortillas. Serves 6.
Pollo Navideño (Christmas Chicken)
Ingredients
- 4 lbs. chicken
- Oil
- 4 oz. raisins
- 8 oz. dried plums
- 3 oz. dried peaches
- 3 cups chicken broth
- 1 medium white onion
- 2 garlic cloves
- 1 cinnamon stick
- ¾ cup of brandy
- Salt to taste
Instructions
- 1. Soak the raisins, plums and peaches in warm water.
- 2. Chop the onion and garlic.
- 3. Heat 4 tbsp oil In a large pan over medium-high heat. Add the chicken and cook until golden brown. Add salt to taste.
- 4. Add the garlic, onion and cinnamon stick, and cook for 10 minutes.
- 5. Add the brandy and stir for 1 minute.
- 6. Add the chicken broth and cook for 25 minutes over low heat.
- 7. Then add the raisins, dry plums and peaches. Cook for another 10 minutes.
- Serves 6.
