LATV Presents ‘Storytellers’ | Black History Month Edition

In celebration of Black History Month, the next edition of Storytellers is honoring twenty Afro-Latino artists who are inspiring and impacting our community through their craft.

Our first list: culinary arts.

ROGELIO SQUIRES

Originally from Panama City, Chef Rogelio Squires is the head chef at Caribbean Soul Kitchen. He opened the restaurant alongside his wife, Mercedes, in 2020 intent on providing Californians both a culinary and cultural experience.

“The only thing that I paint with is my ingredients, my spices, and my canvas is your plate,” Chef Rogelio says on LATV’s Storytellers.

Most influenced by the unwritten recipes of his grandfather, Chef Rogelio brings history to life on his plates, fusing Caribbean and Latin tradition with his own artistry. Favorite dishes include the Sancocho, Patacon, Yuca Frita, and Jerk Chicken. These dishes offer a window into the chef’s personal story.

“Storytelling is very important because we need to be able to relate to one another and understand each other as a people,” he goes on to say. “We do have a certain niche in society that other cultures don’t have.”

From the art to the atmosphere, when you walk into the restaurant you are transported to his corner of the Caribbean. He identifies as an “Afro-Laribbean”—one-part Afro, one-part Latino, one-part Caribbean.

LYANA BLOUNT

For Chef Lyana Blount, food has transformational power.

When the New York Puertoriqueña went vegan, she transformed her health and lifestyle. When she launched Black Rican Vegan, her plant-based culinary brand, she transformed the identity of Puerto Rican cuisine.

“I think it’s important for the community because we’re bringing these vegan options that’s new to them, especially to a place that is so based on tradition,” she tells me at La Fonda in East Harlem. “We’re still doing the same foods they’re familiar with, but with a vegan twist [and in] a more health-conscious way.”

Funny enough, most of Blount’s customers are not even vegan. People just like her food, her new take on traditional dishes.

“I feel like a lot of the food that I make has a story behind it—who taught me, the first time I ate it, my first experience making the recipe,” she says.

From the jackfruit chicharron to the mushroom sandwich, Black Rican Vegan is many people’s first experience at the intersection of vegan, soul, and Puerto Rican cuisine. These inventions in the kitchen, inspired by the stories of her family and lovingly shared with her community, will be part of her transformational legacy.

ILONKA “LA TÍA” GARCÍA

Chef Ilonka García, affectionately known as La Tía, has been a natural in the kitchen since she was a young girl in República Dominicana.

“My heart was always in the kitchen,” she says on LATV’s Blacktinidad.

When she moved to Los Angeles straight from the island in the 90s, following her own tía, she started sharing her recipes at community events in town. People fell in love with her dishes and encouraged her to start a business. So, when she left her corporate job, she launched Karibbean Cuisine, her very own food truck.

“For me, it’s very important that the Dominican community stays together. What better way than food?” she says.

From Tres Golpes to Mondongo, La Tía’s menu takes you on a journey into her roots.

BRYAN FORD

For baker Bryan Ford, baking is historic, emotional, and nostalgic.

“Baking is romantic. Baking is like a meditation,” he says on PBS NewsHour. “The dough is a living creature, too. Every single time, it’s going to be different. The temperatures…your emotions, your mood. How you feel gets translated into the dough.”

The first-generation Afro-Honduran bread-maker has been cooking since his can remember. He consistently returns to lessons learned in his mother’s kitchen, even since releasing his first cookbook, “New World Sourdough”, and landing his own cooking show.

From Ford’s view, baking is less about aesthetic and more about flavor, story, and community. From baleadas to sanitas, his recipes offer us stories to his ancestral past.

“This kind of Western European ideology seems to permeate people’s thoughts when they want to open a bakery,” he goes on to say, “and I’m trying to be more in touch with, you know, the indigenous people of the New World [in] Latin America. I mean, we are a very, very beautiful people. We have beautiful baking traditions as well.”

RAHANNA BISSERET MARTINEZ

At 13-year-old, Chef Rahanna Bisseret Martinez was a finalist on the first season of Top Chef Junior, and that was only the start to her culinary journey.

She has since released her first cookbook, Flavor+Us, which explores the flavors of her Black, Haitian, and Mexican identities. Dedicated to Black and Brown girls of the past, of the present, and of the future, her collection of recipes helps to tell her story.

“The food I grew up with is heavily influenced by the African diaspora and Indigenous Mexican foodways: roasted sweet potatoes with braised greens, fried cornmeal-crusted tofu, an enchiladas in a smoky homemade guajillo sauce,” she writes in the book’s introduction.

For Bisseret Martinez, cooking starts with her love for exploration. Whether she’s preparing a dish inspired by her own lineage or borrowed from other ethnic traditions, she thinks of food as an experience that can even make you a better person.

“Expanding your palate means taking what you know you love and pushing its boundaries,” she goes on to write.

Like all good stories, curiosity comes first.

Check out all of LATV’s Storytellers content here!