Chef Christian Amaro
La Peñita is growing and many of the residents come from other areas, so a common question to hear is “how did you end up here?” and often that story is pretty interesting. This is certainlythe case with Chef Chris, who came to La Peñita back in 2014 with his small family from New York City.
Chris grew up in Morelos, Mexico, near Mexico City in a town called Cocoyoc. This part of Mexico is very traditional and pretty isolated from international tourism. Thirty years ago, it was a small town and not very developed. Chris’s parents split up and moved away when he was a child, leaving him and his four siblings in the care of his grandmother. His memories of this time are bittersweet; the incredible love and generosity of his grandmother mixed with the pain and anxiety of never having enough to eat and always worrying about money. The happiest memories are connected to food: his grandmother making tortillas on the wood-fired stove outside, a hot tortilla with a bit of salt to calm his hunger, fresh plums from the tree in spring, and making eggs for his brothers and sisters.
In 1999 his life changed forever when his mom brought him to the States. He was taken out of school in eighth grade and brought to Manhattan where he immediately started working in his step-dad’s restaurant in Brooklyn. Gone was the idyllic freedom of his rural childhood home,replaced with the intensity and desperation that is New York City. At age fourteen he was thrown into the responsibility of adulthood: he got up at dawn to attend English classes before work, worked twelve hours a day, six days a week and was responsible for paying rent and all of his personal expenses. He learned English quickly and acquired new skills at work, moving from dishwasher to salad prep to prep cook under his step-dad’s tutelage. For years he worked as a Sous chef, supported his family and dedicated his free time to learning more recipes and techniques, taking on more and more responsibility at work.
In 2010 a waitress named Julie from Washington state started working at his restaurant and they began a friendship that would change his life forever. They made a life together in New York, Chris, Julie and her little son Mati, then nine years old. They worked long hours and never had the same day off. The fast-paced, competitive New York life-style began to take its toll. By spring of 2014 they decided to leave New York and move somewhere rural, warm and outside the US. Chris was very anxious at the prospect of leaving the only stable home he’d ever known. It had taken so much work to succeed in New York City. How would he start over somewhere new?
Chris’s memories of Mexico were mostly negative, he remembered being hungry, living in homes without running water or electricity, many hardships and struggles. Julie became convinced that he needed to reconnect with his roots and make new, happier memories in his home country. She found a school in Puerto Vallarta looking for a teacher, and bought the plane tickets. Once in Vallarta they realized it wasn’t the town they were looking for and decided to explore Nayarit coast. They visited each little town, from Sayulita to Las Varas, and decided on La Peñita. The first week Mati started school at the local primaria and Chris started working at the restaurant that was then called Xaltemba. The first year was a huge adjustment for the whole family, but especially for Chris. Leaving New York City for La Peñita was quite a change.
He suffered from culture shock and depression and constantly talked of “going home” to New York.
In 2016, for Semana Santa, Chris had the opportunity to return to Morelos and visit the family he had left behind in 1999. It was an incredible experience to be reunited with his grandmother after so many years. He realized that he had spent his entire adult life cooking and feeding people but he had never used the recipes or flavors of his childhood. He returned to La Peñita determined to bring the flavors of his favorite foods to a wider audience, to use the skills he learned in New York to celebrate the complex and ancient recipes of his roots. He started doing cooking classes in his home in English, teaching the traditional techniques and recipes of his grandmother.
Living in Mexico has its own challenges but Chris finally feels at home in La Peñita after nine years. He continues to offer cooking classes on traditional Mexican dishes, but has branched out and does classic New York style brunch on Thursdays, pizzas for pick up and private
catered dinners for small parties. He has discovered a new sense of pride in his heritage and history and takes great pleasure in sharing his favorite recipes from his childhood. Chef Chris dreams of bigger things, opening his own restaurant, perhaps cooking shows on T.V. or Chopped style competitions, and every year brings new opportunities. He feels incredibly grateful to be able to live in paradise, steps from the Pacific Ocean, doing work that he loves.
His joie de vivre reveals itself in his food, and everyone he feeds leaves the table happy.
