From KCRW, I'm Evan Klyman and you're listening to good food.

There are countless stories of chefs,

of apprenticeship, labor and talent,

and arise through the ranks until the years of work

bloom into the full flower of an owned restaurant.

Then there is Eduardo, aka Lalo Garcia's story.

A singular epic worthy of cinematic telling with a cruel twist that also reveals a lot about us and the two countries, Mexico and the US, that shaped Garcia.

Journalist Laura Tillman writes his story in her book, The Migrant Chef.

So it helps to start at the beginning how I decided to write this book in the first place.

When I met Lalo, I was looking to tell a story

of a bunch of people who worked in a restaurant.

That was sort of my first idea

was to tell the story of someone who's a dishwasher, someone who's an aspiring chef,

someone who's a manager, a waiter.

And then I met Lalo and it became clear that he was sort of living all of these lives at the same time.

Like he was the person who flies first class to eat and drink at a restaurant in some remote corner of the world.

But he also inside of him is still very much the farm worker that he was as a child.

And he was really wrestling with these contradictions.

And I think that part of what's moving about that journey to me is it touches on a lot of things

that are very specific to him but that are also a little more

universal that all of us kind of are in this trap where we want more, we want to stay true to who we are, but we're also chasing success in different ways.

That is one of the pieces of the story that I think feels just very human and real to me and at the same time very extraordinary

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