Chepe Cuadra is an artist and a chef in St. Albans. For almost a decade, he’s been selling Nicaraguan and Spanish food at farmers markets across Vermont.
He specializes in the same dishes he grew up eating as a kid in Nicaragua, like gallo pinto and nacatamales. He says his food is like “having a piece of Nicaragua on your plate.”
This interview was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Chepe Cuadra: My name is Chepe, and I started this food adventure in 2017 — like going to the market, and cooking the food, and offering different dishes.
Vermont is kind of isolated from the rest of the United States. Here, there is very little Latino community. It forces me to bring this Latino food to this part of the world that we are not very known.
I had once a lady, she was young, and I was showing her all the Nicaraguan food, and she started crying. She ordered gallo pinto and nacatamal and then she was crying as she was eating. And she was saying that, "The last time I ate this, this gallo pinto, this rice and beans, was made by my grandmother before she died."
So I went to art school since I am 17 years old. I started applying color theory in the food. Like the yellowish marble of the paella, with the sprinkles of red in the fish and the seafood. To me, cooking is like painting. Like, knowing all your flavors, knowing all the textures, knowing all the things you can do with these materials.
I decided to move out of Nicaragua since I was 19. So I’ve been about 50 or 60 years, living out of Nicaragua, on and off. And, you know, I have a lot of friends, a lot of family [in Nicaragua]. And living outside in another country, but wanting to be in Nicaragua, is like living two lives. It’s kind of complicated, because at times it’s hard to reconcile.
"When you sit on a table to eat the food, there is all these people in the circle that are together, sharing. And if there is any differences, you discuss and you come to terms of friendship."Chepe Cuadra, artist and chef
But this is why, one of the reasons why, I came up with the nacatamales. Cooking this food — well, it put me kind of at peace with some part of my life. Because now I’m living outside of Nicaragua, but I have something very, very Nicaraguan. It’s like having a piece of Nicaragua on your plate.
Food and art is a good way to not only sharing knowledge and sharing sensibility, but also bring love and therefore, peace. When you sit on a table to eat the food, there is all these people in the circle that are together, sharing. And if there is any differences, you discuss and you come to terms of friendship. And so it’s a way of collaborating with peace and love for the world that is so needed at this time, and has always been.
This story comes from a collaboration between Vermont Public and the Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship. Production support by Kelsey Tolchin-Kupferer.
