“My Profession isn't routine-based. I'm a very flexible person" - Gabriel Cámara

Gabriela Cámara – Chef and owner of five restaurants (Mexico City’s Contramar and Entremar, San Francisco’s Cala and Tacos Cala, and L.A.’s upcoming Onda); cookbook author; cultural affairs adviser to Mexico; star of Netflix’s 2019 documentary A Tale of Two Kitchens

- By Ben Paynter. Photograph by Arturo Olmos

You have to be kind of crazy to embark on [this career]. And you have to be crazier to keep on doing it after 21 years, because it is completely excruciating. It is a full-fullfull-full-full-time job. If you’re serious about what you do, you never stop thinking about it. I’m physically strong and can put up with long hours of work and being on my feet and cooking all day or having events [where] you’re moving around all day. Restaurants are always going, and it’s sort of like you’re having the same performance every day, but it isn’t the same. You have to keep everybody excited, as if it were the first day, or the only day.

People in restaurants are used to solving problems. That is one of our biggest strengths. When you’re successful in restaurants, it means you’re doing something that the public finds attractive enough to make it a business and to make it keep on existing. And I feel that speaks highly of one’s ability to fix things before they are a [major] problem. —As told to Ben Paynter