Monterey Reps California at Frida Kahlo House

December 12, 2023 – The cooking mission was crazy enough already.

It went something like this: 

1. Fly from Monterey to Mexico City to make a singular meal. 

2. Pack many of the local ingredients for the dinner on the plane. 

3. Cook a private event for 40 media members and international representatives, as a favor for arguably the country’s most famous food personality. 

4. Properly represent all of California for all of Mexico.

5. Remember: no pressure.

Then, with additional details, the mission gets crazier still. 

The meal would be happening in Frida Kahlo’s family home, in the gorgeous and historic Mexico City neighborhood of Coyoacán. (More on Frida and Coyoacán in a minute.)

The bonus plot twist there: Kahlo’s family home—a museum-to-be event venue called The Red House, which is different from the much visited Blue House—has no commercial cooking infrastructure. 

Plus you’ll have only a few hours to prep the space and train up a Mexico City-based kitchen team completely new to you. 

So it went for Nestor Marin, sous chef at standout Marina spot Salt Wood Oysterette & Kitchen.

Interestingly enough, when it was all said and done, from the oysters to the after party, the most compelling place the mission took him was clarity on his life. 

The mission started with a promotional coup of sorts. 

See Monterey, aka the Monterey County Convention and Visitors Bureau, partnered with Visit California to take Marco Beteta on a tour of the Golden State’s restaurants, from San Diego to San Francisco and beyond.

Beteta is a star chef, TV personality and food critic who churns out a lot of restaurant guides. 

And the good gente hang on his recommendations. 

Emily Evans, communications director for See Monterey, calls him the most recognized gastronomic voice in his country. I’ve heard chefs call him the James Beard of Mexico. 

While Beteta was in Monterey County, they took him to Salt Wood Kitchen & Oysterette, Nepenthe, La Bicyclette and Promesa, the latter which sadly closed last month. 

(Sidenote: That begs the question, if you had four spots to best rep the Monterey Peninsula food scene, which would you pick?)

Beteta loved Salt Wood so much that he asked exec chef Jonny Rodriguez and company to cook on behalf of the restaurant—and the state—for a dinner Beteta would host with Visit California in Mexico City.

Down in ol’ Mexico is where a crazy mission kept getting crazier. 

Unfortunately, Rodriguez didn’t get his passport in time, but they reasoned he still could co-create the menu—keeping in mind Beteta went bonkers for Salt Wood’s tomahawk steak—and Marin’s fluent Spanish would come in handy with a Mexican team.

As they prepped, they also figured he’d be part of a collection of California chefs. 

Nope. Marin would be the lead chef.

Another surprise followed: Once Marin got to Mexico City and got familiar with the Casa Frida space-—which will be converted into a museum September 2024—he learned there weren’t enough plates for the courses he had planned, on top of the fact the fridge and oven were more artifact than big production appropriate.

Marin immediately took the shelves from the household refrigerator to stack dozens of pumpkin panna cotta that would close the four-course adventure. 

Along with his new squad, he figured out how to quick-wash plates coming back from the dining room. 

Somehow they made the limited plates and sinks—and four-burner stove, and basic oven—work.

It made it harder that the plates were coming back so fast. But it made it easier, and provided real-time positive feedback, that the dishes were completely cleaned. 

“It was kind of a feat,” Marin says. “I don’t know how we figured it out.” 

Out went waves of Salt Wood/Central Cali fare: grilled oyster with passionfruit, yuzu and lardo; kuri and kabocha squash soup with roasted coffee oil, pain d’epice and brown butter; 48-hour short rib with Carolina Gold barbecue sauce and pickled shishito peppers; and pumpkin panna cotta with spiced pecan granola, sea salt whip and urfa beiber Turkish chili pepper.

“Between the inconveniences and the anxiety, it was really tough in the moment,” he says. “But by the end, it was a special meal and an experience I’m not going to forget.”

Evans helps zoom out to the bigger implications of the night. 

“We’re incredibly honored to have chef Nestor showcase Monterey’s cuisine to dozens of Mexican journalists,” she says. “It was a super unique opportunity to present our food in a different country, and this will go far to help draw in visitors from a valuable international market.”

Frida Kahlo earns iconic status worldwide for her irreverence and resilience, artistic eye and self-awareness, activism and eyebrow.

She deserves even more for her adaptability. 

“Nothing is absolute,” she once said. “Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away.”

So there are some poetic parallels at work with Marin making a meaningful meal happen in her family’s home.

As part of the hard-to-predict process, he happened upon a realization. 

That comes up when I ask him what it’s like to be an ambassador for an entire state, for an entire nation. 

He laughs, and then responds with a question: “How do I say it…?”

“This is not just my career. This is my life. To do something like this was an eyeopener. A game changer,” he continues. “It made me realize where I’m at, to understand, ‘Oh shit you can do this.’

“It tells me I’m on the right path. I should keep doing what I’m doing.” 

More at saltwoodkitchenandoysterette.com and seemonterey.com.