Cooking the Borderlands: Spice and Smoke Between Mexico and the States
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Chef Claudette Zepeda grew up moving between San Diego and Tijuana, and that upbringing shapes how she treats the U.S.-Mexico border here: not as a line that divides two cuisines, but as its own distinct culinary region, shaped by migration, exchange, and overlapping traditions. Across more than one hundred recipes and personal essays, she shows cultures meeting and influencing one another, creating something that belongs to neither side alone but to the border itself.
The recipes travel across the western borderlands, highlighting regional dishes like esquites, chicken sopes, arroz poblano, Baja-style garlic shrimp, and capirotada while also tracing the influences of Chinese, Japanese, Italian, and other immigrant communities that have become part of northern Mexico’s food culture. Throughout, Zepeda pairs recipes with stories of family, identity, and the everyday experience of living between two countries.
Part cookbook and part cultural memoir, Cooking the Borderlands offers a nuanced portrait of one of North America’s most dynamic food regions, revealing how history, migration, and shared traditions continue to shape the cuisine on both sides of the border.
Hardcover. Color photographs throughout.
Published on June 2, 2026
