Born: Brownsville, Texas, USA, 1941
Mother tongue: Spanish
Grandchildren: Nicolás, Logan
They call her: Grandma
When we were little my mother would cook this for us. I made it with her when I was just a kid. I never met my father and we were raised by my mother alone, so we didn’t have much money growing up. I’m the oldest of four and I was the one tasked with helping my mother. She’d give me a dollar to go to the store and buy the meat for picadillos, then we’d stand and make this together. We’d eat this with rice, and the next day we might have it in some tacos or in a tortilla with avocado. You have to make do with what you have. That’s the Mexican way.
Now I love to host and to have parties. At Cinco de Mayo I had 200 people at my home. I like to entertain, which is probably why I have my own restaurant. I opened Irma’s in 1989 and we’re still going. We get people coming from all over the world. I even won a James Beard Award. It was such an honour but I still accepted my award dressed in my shorts and apron.
In Texas we tweak the traditional Mexican dishes because of the abundance of cattle. There’s so much beef that there’s no escaping it in our cuisine. We still consider this to be Mexican because in spite of growing up in Texas, we were raised Mexican and that means making one small meal go a long way.
I don’t go back to where my mother was born because these places are deep in Mexico and they’re dangerous. I was born very close to the border with Mexico in South Texas and that place itself is now a risky place to live. It’s where a lot of drugs cross between.
There’s a little friction between the Mexicans that live in Mexico and those that live in Texas. They feel we have it made here in the US. Maybe we do, but we have worked hard to make it that way. People in Mexico are humble, hardworking and they come up here for the ‘American Dream’ that everybody talks about.
When I was a little girl I didn’t have anything. I admired people that had nice things. I hoped I would one day be like them. Now I have my own business and five houses of my own. I am a person that wants to get ahead. I’m a leader and I’m only going to retire when God decides to retire me.
I was 21 years old when I married and 29 when he died. They murdered him at a bar. He was celebrating New Year’s Eve and was shot while I was at home with our kids making tamales. He was supposed to be at home. It’s a Mexican custom – being with the family, making tamales and gathering to eat at midnight. They didn’t find him until the next day. We were waiting for him, but two detectives came knocking at nine o’clock in the morning. My youngest child was just five years old. We were devastated.
What I believe is that men come and go but your friends will always be there. Without my girls, I’m nothing. We work together as a team. We taste each other’s cooking. We’ve been cooking together for decades. I depend on them, they depend on me. At work, we’re all like family. No one is an employee. They’re just all my girls. It’s not about me being the big boss. I work alongside everyone and we do this thing together. It’s so important to love your people if you’re delegating and managing or head of a company. You have to be strong but forgiving and you have to be together with them. I eat with my girls every day. There’s not one day I would eat without them. 1.30 p.m., it’s lunch for us all. Together.
