“People in Kitchens are Always Punks”

In 2019, the LA-based chef Andy Zambrano started COMAL — a plant-based Mexican food pop up. With COMAL, Zambrano does kitchen takeovers, private dinners, and even took the show on the road once with a pop-up tour of California. Before COMAL, though, Zambrano got his start selling burritos to his friends after his own band’s shows. For the latest issue of the Talkhouse Reader, he told us how that punk ethos led him to where he is now. The Food Issue is available now digitally and in print. 
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music

At first, it was just for fun. Not necessarily to make money or anything. But at the end of every show, more often than not, we all wanted to get food together — the bands, all of our friends. So I thought, why not have it ready and available after the show? At the time, I wasn’t familiar with food costs or anything, so I honestly think I was losing money. But it didn’t matter to me, because all that mattered was that we were eating together and hanging out. It tied into the punk ethos: doing it just to do it. 

The food was very straightforward, really just burritos. I was living with my parents still, so I was pre-making a bunch of burritos, rolling them up and putting them in those insulated grocery bags. Eventually, I did tacos too. I have an electric steam table, so I’d just heat up everything ahead of time, bring tortillas from the market — if you go to the Mexican market, you can buy freshly made tortillas that are already warm — and then the meat would already be hot because I’d warm it up at home. At the time, that was really all I knew to make. I wasn’t well-versed yet, and I just knew that everyone likes tacos and burritos. It was what we’d eat after a show anyway. 

I ended up buying a cart in late 2019. Originally, the idea was for it to be a normal taco cart — just like a street vendor, but it would be plant-based tacos. At the time that I was developing the recipes, I was working at a restaurant here in Los Angeles called Kitchen Mouse. And funny enough, I had become friends with this chef named Jason Wood who’s also in the punk scene. People in kitchens are always punks. The labor put into making food is very similar to making music — you’re very hands-on, you have to practice to get better, and there are other people that are gonna be better than you but you guys are still working side-by-side — which is why I think the worlds overlap each other a lot. 

So Jason and I immediately clicked. It wasn’t until I met him that I realized, I think I want to be a chef now. His career path, musically and food-wise, was very similar to mine, but he’s got 10 years on me so I really looked up to him. I was like, Oh, so there’s more to food than making tacos… 

Because I’ve switched over to a little more refined dishes, I don’t do pop ups at shows anymore. It’s difficult, because I would love to do stuff like that, but at the same time, I owe it to myself to go beyond serving at a show. But that’s where it started, that’s where I met these chefs and cooks. 

As told to Annie Fell.