Chef Rosa Martinez has been on a nearly 30-year mission to share Oaxacan food and culture through her hearty moles, tamales, enchiladas, and more. In 2016, she decided to launch Origen and showcase Oaxacan flavors through events, catering, and a restaurant she plans to open in the Bay Area.
Origen was born out of Rosa's belief that Oaxacan cuisine in the Bay Area is underrepresented, and her appreciation for tradition, family, and quality gives her cooking that special sazón.
Rosa comes to us from La Cocina, an organization that cultivates low-income food entrepreneurs as they formalize and grow their businesses.
Maria del Carmen Flores was the oldest of 12 children and was born and raised in El Salvador where she started selling tostadas, pupusas, fresh fruit with chili and salt alongside her mother when she was six years old. Over the next 30 years, she lived all over Central America, mastering the local cuisine in El Salvador, Guatemala and Oaxaca, Mexico and selling snacks on the street to make a living.
Estrellita's Snacks is a Salvadoran food company specializing in Pupusas, Tamales, and Tostadas. The company was born in San Francisco's Mission District, where Maria del Carmen began selling her freshly fried plantain and yucca chips to local business owners and families that missed the taste and crunch of tostadas from El Salvador.
Maria has been producing her food in the La Cocina kitchen since 2005, with the help of her children and her children's children. The company name is derived from Estrella, which means star in Spanish and is also the name of her daughter and granddaughter.
Chef Guisell was born in Santiago de Chile and moved to the Bay Area with nothing more than $27 and a dream in her pocket. After several months of searching, she realized the only way to eat her favorite South American dishes was to cook them herself. “In order to eat what I craved, I had to make everything myself. ” She soon informally started her food business, Sabores del Sur (Flavors from the South), selling her favorite South American foods to friends and family.
In 2004, after more than a year of preparation, Chef Guisell formally opened Sabores del Sur. She immediately began her association with non-profits La Cocina and Women’s Initiative, which provided commercial kitchen space, industry expertise and other resources for her success.
Sabores del Sur has since become one of the Bay Area’s favorite South American restaurants and food & catering companies, supporting Fair Trade, Locally Grown and Buy Local Programs and employing Environmentally Sensitive and “Green” business practices.
One day, two best friends, Hannah and Hannah, decided they were tired of settling for drinks made with mysterious ingredients and loads of sugar. In a world full of so many healthy food choices, they felt like these options weren't available when it came to happy hour. They set out to create a drink they could enjoy without feeling guilty using only all-natural ingredients and zero added sugar.
Salut makes plant-based cocktail and mocktail infusions using specially curated organic dried fruits, flowers and herbs that are known to have health benefits. Salut is on a mission is to make meaningful drinks with all-natural ingredients more accessible and to create products that are environmentally-friendly.
Amelia’s love affair with flavors started in Las Flores, Jalisco, Mexico, where she began cooking on her own at the age of eight in the farm kitchen of a strong maternal grandmother. “Mamá Chepa” taught Amelia to cook with fresh, home grown ingredients and to identify edible wild mushrooms by smell. When Amelia joined her father, Felipe Morán, in Rutherford in 1967, along with her older sister and mother, Francesca Fuentes Morán, Amelia threw herself into her new world. On her first weekend in the Napa Valley, Amelia was in the vineyard, harvesting with a knife that seemed half the size of the petite 12-year old.
Ceja Vineyards was twice named “Best Boutique Winery in Napa & Sonoma” by Best of Napa and Sonoma Valleys Magazine, based on its 2008 and 2009 popular polls. “We like efficiency, but nurturing and warmth must be present with efficiency. Our team becomes part of our extended family. That comes from our culture,” explains Amelia.
