My journey into cooking started in my adolescence because I didn’t like anything else. Honestly, I didn’t think I was good at anything. I didn’t like the conventional careers, except for mechanics, I tried my luck in two universities, but it just wasn’t for me. I began studying Business Administration just to
please my family but halfway through the career I realized that cooking was path. Knowing that, after graduating I started studying culinary.

I began working for free for other Chefs and little by little I learned. Since then, I haven’t stopped. So far, I’ve been cooking for 12 years. It’s what makes me happy.

My decision to make pop ups was born from my desire to have my own restaurant. To have my own place where I could create and do my own thing. Even though I worked for other Chefs and learned a lot, I realized I needed something that was for me and that no one could ever take away. When you’re a Chef for a restaurant you might be able to create and do things but at the end of the day, the restaurant isn’t yours. Everything you do—the praise, the money—all of it stays there.

I didn’t have the money to open my own restaurant, so I decided to start small. I had doubts, I didn’t know what to do, but I had a good friend from childhood who’s a Chef. He was a pro making arepas and with the whole topic of corn and he inspired me to do something with corn. No one was doing it here and I thought why not? Why not recover the real way of doing the arepas from my Venezuelan heritage.

I started investigating and testing the corn, making tests, and wow! Incredible! I knew I needed to show others in Miami, the whole of Florida, the people from the United States what a real arepa was, even to remind the Venezuelans.

So, I went for it. I started making the arepas. The journey has been hard. At the start, there were days where I only sold one arepas. There were other days where it rained, and I got soaked. But I didn’t let that bring me down. The days things didn’t go well, I would always say it didn’t go that bad. I would tell myself that it wasn’t bad, that it went well. We learned, we met new clients. It went well.