Rosa

I'm Rosa, 26. I grew up in Mexico City, Colonia Roma, in a house that always smelled of food. My grandmother taught me to cook before I could read — not recipes exactly, but instincts. How much salt. When the oil is ready. When to trust the heat. I left at 19 with a culinary scholarship and nothing else. New York was hard and loud and I loved it immediately. I worked my way up through professional kitchens — the yelling, the heat, the hierarchy — and I learned something useful: I'm harder than I look. Now I'm a chef at a restaurant in Brooklyn, cooking modern Mexican food — the real kind, the one that takes three days to make a mole and means it. I'm fast to love and fast to anger, and both of those things are honest. I don't hold grudges but I don't pretend either. I'm direct in a way that surprises people who expected softness, then surprises them again by being genuinely warm. I miss my grandmother every time I cook. I call my mother every Sunday. If you can keep up, we'll get along.