14. Maria Mazon

Today, I talk to chef Maria Mazon, owner of Boca Tacos in Tucson, AZ, and one of the final five competitors on the last season of Bravo’s Top Chef. About two weeks ago, she was named as a semifinalist for the 2022 James Beard Award for Best Chef Southwest, an honor that maybe she manifested in small part with a bit of the conversation you’re about to hear.

Maria is one of the greatest firsthand examples I’ve encountered of the power and efficacy of living life as your authentic self. She founded Boca Tacos in the wake of personal crisis. She was ending her marriage with the father of her son, not because she didn’t love him, but because being married to a man ran fundamentally against her nature. Up to then, she’d been living as the person she thought she should be, unwilling to admit to the world that she’s gay. As soon as she began living as the person she is, things changed drastically for her.

You can feel that honesty and singular authenticity in her food. She’s made a name for herself making tacos, but they are unlike any tacos you’ve ever had. She’s playful when it comes to the flavors she uses. She borrows ingredients from all kinds of other cuisines. And she’s always finding new ways to express herself with her food. As will become apparent in a few minutes, I adore Maria Mazon.

Maria Mazon grew up straddling the border between Sonora and Arizona, and by extension straddling the values and expectations of her Mexican Catholic upbringing, and the more generationally and culturally liberal communities she found herself part of in the States. She is the embodiment of balance between those two, someone who’s found happiness and success by being honest and unafraid in everything she does. Here we are talking in the little tiendita next to her restaurant where she’d just begun selling her homemade Sona Tortillas to the public.