San Miguel Women: Gaby Green — Cooking San Miguel’s Story
- San Miguel Life
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
When Gaby Green arrived in San Miguel in 1996, she came for the culture and creative energy. With a background in film production and the arts, food wasn’t necessarily the plan—but in many ways, it had always been part of her story.
Gaby grew up in a large, multicultural family where food was at the center of everything. Her Mexican-French-Spanish grandmother from Jalisco, the mother of twelve children, filled the family table with traditional Mexican dishes and bold flavors. Her other grandmother, with Ukrainian and Austrian roots, introduced her to an entirely different culinary tradition. From an early age, Gaby learned that food was more than something you ate—it was family, culture and connection.
San Miguel’s culinary scene looked very different when Gaby arrived. She saw an opportunity and began opening fondas—casual neighborhood restaurants centered around home-style Mexican cooking. In the early 2000s, she went on to introduce San Miguel’s first food truck, experimenting with new ideas and increasingly international flavors.
In 2015 came Agua Miel in Colonia San Antonio. Alongside her partner from Louisiana, Gaby blended Mexican flavors with American comfort food, creating a neighborhood favorite that reflected something San Miguel does so well: bringing cultures together. Through every chapter, Gaby has had an instinct for what San Miguel was becoming—and the courage to keep creating right alongside it.
Then the pandemic brought another reinvention. After decades of opening restaurants, creating menus and training staff, Gaby had already begun teaching customers Mexican dishes after hours. When the restaurant closed, those informal lessons became her next chapter: a cooking school. At almost the same time, she moved into a home seemingly made for gathering and teaching.
Her kitchen became her classroom, and her students became guests in her home: Mi casa es tu casa.
Perhaps that is what makes Gaby’s story feel so quintessentially San Miguel. This is a city that gives people permission to reinvent themselves—sometimes more than once. It is constantly changing, welcoming new people and ideas while holding tightly to the culture and traditions that make it special.
For nearly three decades, Gaby has done the same. She has reinvented herself again and again while staying rooted in who she is. And along the way, she hasn’t just adapted to San Miguel’s changing culinary scene—she has been one of the women helping create it.
For someone discovering you for the first time, tell us about what you do and what inspired you to create it.
I’m Chef Gaby Green, y cocinera de corazón. I’ve been cooking professionally for about 30 years, and today I teach Mexican cooking from my home in San Miguel.
What inspires me most is sharing my heritage and my knowledge of Mexican food—not only recipes, but the story behind them. In my classes, I love introducing people to pre-Hispanic tools and techniques, traditional ingredients and a little of the history that has shaped our cuisine. I also share my own experience growing up in a bicultural Mexican family and the different flavors and traditions that influenced me.
For me, cooking has always been about more than preparing food. It's a way to share culture, history and a part of who I am.
How has San Miguel influenced the way you cook or create food?
Living in San Miguel has taught me so much about cooking with what is local and seasonal. Mexico changes so much from region to region, and when I teach Mexican recipes, I always look first to the region around San Miguel—both to the ingredients and to the history behind the food.
One of my favorite examples is enchiladas mineras, one of Guanajuato’s most traditional dishes. The tortillas are dipped in a guajillo chile sauce, fried and served with ingredients like potatoes, carrots and cheese. They are closely tied to Guanajuato’s mining history and became popular as an economical, filling food for miners working long days underground. I love that a dish can tell you something about the people who lived and worked here.
San Miguel has also shown me how food continues to evolve when cultures come together. Mexican cuisine itself is the result of so many influences over generations, and San Miguel is a very multicultural city. I've been here since 1996, so I've watched the food scene change enormously. There are always new people, new ideas and new flavors arriving, while our traditional Mexican food remains at the heart of it.
That mix of history, regional tradition and new influences has given me the freedom to keep experimenting and reinventing what I do.
What role do you think women are playing in shaping San Miguel’s culinary scene today?
There are definitely more women in San Miguel and in Mexico taking their place professionally in the culinary world, and I think that's very important.
Traditionally, women were expected to do the cooking at home, so generations of women grew up with an incredible amount of culinary knowledge passed down from mothers and grandmothers. But being able to take that knowledge and also train as a chef, build a business, open a restaurant or teach gives women something different: a profession, independence and freedom.
I think in many ways it has been a liberation. Women have always been an essential part of Mexican food culture; now we're seeing more of them recognized for that knowledge and creativity outside the home as chefs, restaurateurs and entrepreneurs.
And you see it happening throughout Mexico. In Mexico City there are so many incredible women chefs doing exciting things. Gabriela Cámara of Contramar is one of my favorites, and there are many others taking Mexican culinary traditions and creating something distinctly their own.
Here in San Miguel, I love what Paulina Carreno of Panina is doing. She’s also from my home state of Jalisco and, after training in acclaimed kitchens in Mexico and Europe, has brought that experience back to Mexican ingredients and traditions. At Panina, she has taken the tradition of sourdough—shaped in part by French influence in Mexico—and made it her own. She’s a great example of this new generation of Mexican women taking what came before us, adding their own experiences, and moving our food culture forward.
For me, it’s exciting to see women taking knowledge that has always existed in our kitchens and families and having the opportunity to build careers, businesses and new ideas around it.
How important are local producers, farms, markets or seasonal ingredients to your work?
They are incredibly important. I believe in supporting local and consuming local whenever possible—produce, meat, dairy, corn products, bread, butter. We have access to so many wonderful ingredients here. We live in paradise!
I especially love shopping in the traditional mercados. I buy my chiles from the marchantas—the women vendors who sell their products in the market—at Mercado Ignacio Ramírez, and I love going to the placita and the Tuesday Market. You can find ingredients from all over Mexico there, along with beautiful fresh local produce.
Fast Five
A local food, ingredient or tradition you love: The tradition of making fresh tortillas and eating them straight off a hot comal. There’s nothing like a warm, freshly made tortilla.
One word that describes San Miguel’s food scene: Vibrant. It's always changing, and there are always new places to try.
One San Miguel food experience everyone should try: Eating in the mercados! It can be an incredible experience. If you're a little nervous about where to eat, look at where the locals are eating and choose a place that's busy. In a mercado, busy usually means good!
One Mexican ingredient you always have in your kitchen: Avocado.
Where do you go for a special dinner? I can't pick just one, so I have three! For traditional Mexican food, María Xoconostle. For something new and creative, Garnacha. And for something really special and different right now, Bocaciega —their new chef from Oaxaca is doing something amazing.
Cook with Gaby
Want to experience Gaby’s cooking for yourself? Join Chef Gaby Green for a fun, hands-on cooking class where you’ll prepare authentic Mexican dishes using fresh, local ingredients while learning about the history, traditions, and family stories behind them.
Celebrating something special—or simply want an unforgettable dinner at home? Gaby also creates private dining experiences in your home or rental, tailoring the menu and evening for you and your guests.
⭐️ Trip Advisor: Cooking Classes with Chef Gaby Green
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