Adriana Urbina 18 de Julio de 2018
She
expresses her heritage through cooking in the U.S. and seeks to support other
women immigrants who aspire to become business owners.
In the Women
Entrepreneur series My Worst Moment, female founders provide a firsthand account of the
most difficult, gut-wrenching, almost-made-them-give-up experience they’ve had
while building their business -- and how they recovered.
Adriana Urbina has been working in restaurants since she was
15. By 18, she had already studied at a culinary school in her home country of Venezuela and headed to
Spain to continue her studies, where she landed an apprenticeship under Martín Berasategui, a celebrated Basque chef, after cold-emailing him.
By 19, she’d secured a yearlong stint at a Michelin-starred Manhattan
restaurant, Rouge Tomate, and at 20, she returned to Venezuela for a year to
regroup and plan more travels.
During that time, the political situation in Venezuela
took a turn. If she wanted to live abroad, Urbina realized she would have to
seek political asylum with no option of returning home. She made the sacrifice,
and in the past five years, she’s earned the title of executive chef at New
York’s De Maria, launched her own pop-up dining company, Tepuy Dining, and competed on the Food Network’s cooking show Chopped-- and won.
What follows is a firsthand account of this person's
experience. This interview has been edited for length and
clarity.
“When the political situation in Venezuela worsened,
things got very dangerous and didn’t feel safe. I realized that my quality of
life would not be the same if I stayed, because it became hard to even find basic
products, and I knew that I couldn’t thrive there. But I started looking into
all of the amazing restaurants in New York and felt inspired by the
opportunity.
Deciding to take political asylum was a difficult
decision. I feel incredibly close to Venezuela as my home, and I was making the
decision to not be able to go back. My sister was also living in New York, so
it helped to know I would have some family there, even though I was leaving
others behind. But I still was very sad to leave, nervous for the future and
afraid of not knowing when I was going to see my family again.
After moving to New York in 2013, I worked at Atera,
French Louie and a few other restaurants. At the same time, I launched Tepuy
Dining, my pop-up dinner service, which has been an incredible opportunity to
be creative with dishes from my own heritage.
A few years ago, the team from De Maria started
attending my pop-ups. When they were looking for a new chef, they thought of
me, and I joined the team this past spring. There, my cooking brings me back to
Venezuela every day. So many of my dishes hold stories of my childhood and
family within them.
Being a female executive chef certainly poses
challenges. Cooks are sometimes resistant to being in a kitchen where there’s a
woman at the helm. There have been moments when people have talked down to me
or thought that I am not capable, because I am an immigrant, or because I’m a
woman (or both). It’s satisfying to prove them wrong, but it can be tiresome to
consistently face stereotypes and doubt. With that said, my team respects me
greatly, and we work well as a collective unit.
I think it’s especially important for women in the
culinary world to look out for one another and help find opportunities for one another. One of my long-term goals is to
help other women chefs, especially immigrants, start their own pop-ups or other
culinary businesses. When I started Tepuy, I wished I had someone to help guide
me through the process, and I want to be that for others.
My experiences have taught me to be patient. I know
how to move fast in the kitchen and solve problems quickly, but when it comes
to immigration, it’s also important to know how to wait.
There is a lot unknown for the future of Venezuela,
and it’s unsettling to not know when all of my family will be together again.
But I wouldn’t change anything about my decision to move. This experience has
made me stronger as a person, and I feel incredibly lucky to do what I love
every day and cook from my heart. Being able to be creative and give others a
memorable dining experience is a gift.”
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