Plant-Based Mexican Food? Bring on Chef Eddie Garza

Plant-based chef Eddie Garza is transforming Mexican cuisine. A lover of food, arts, and experiences, he travels the world sourcing ingredients and collecting flavors for his recipes. Whether he is reimagining cultural staples or inventing new cutting-edge dishes, his food always tells a story.

Garza has been cooking since he was young.

“I think the beginning of my storytelling started in the kitchen,” Garza says on the Pride episode of Storytellers. “It started with my grandma, and her stories. I wouldn’t know anything about my kitchen, about my cuisine, if it wasn’t for my grandma and her stories.”

It was also in the kitchen that he came into his queer identity.

In the beginning, it was his hiding place. As a kid, instead of playing sports outside with the other boys, he enjoyed being in the kitchen with his grandma instead. And his grandma would tell him, if he was going to be there, he was certainly going to help her cook.

Chef Eddie Garza

Back in South Texas, the recipes of his youth (though tasty) were packed with unhealthy, ultra-processed ingredients. And it had major effects on his health.

“Growing up on the border, you get the best of Mexico, and you get the best of the US, (or maybe the worst of, who knows?), but it’s junk food [on] junk food, and when you eat too much of it, you grow to be really unhealthy,” Garza says on the show.

At 21-years-old, when Garza reached a maximum weight of 310 pounds, a friend encouraged him to attend a weekend retreat dedicated to healthy living. That experienced changed his life.

In his weight loss journey, he realized that it was the fruits and vegetables that were making him feel better. He abandoned meats and dairy altogether and became entirely plant-based.

“I remember when I first went vegan and I went back home, my mom didn’t know what to do. It was Thanksgiving. She served me an apple quartered on a plate,” he says with a smile. “I laughed. It’s just funny. That’s what most people thought of 21 years ago, or even longer than that.”

Garza, a music teacher at the time, developed a mission: to reclaim the flavorful, soulful foods he’d grown up eating, but as a vegan. He made minor adjustments and substitutions: vegetable stock instead of chicken stock, olive oil instead of lard. And not only did he want to make these meals for himself, he wanted to share them with his community.

He pivoted professionally—and became a chef.

“[I want] to show people that they can eat the foods that we grew up on, but in a healthier way,” he says. “My food is for everybody. My food is for anybody who likes to eat food with flavor. When you taste my food, it’s a flavor explosion.”

We sat down with Chef Eddie in the kitchen and heard his story firsthand. Check out the docu-segment in the Storytellers universe, here at LatiNation Media.