About the Guests
Gabe Erales is the chef and owner of Oido in Austin, Texas, a restaurant rooted in masa-driven Mexican cooking and the culinary traditions of Oaxaca. He is a James Beard Award semifinalist and a prominent voice in the conversation around Mexican regional cuisine and its representation in American fine dining.
Rico Torres is a co-founder and co-owner of Mixtli in San Antonio, which he built alongside Diego Galicia. Born and raised in El Paso, Torres is a self-taught chef who moved to San Antonio and opened Mixtli in 2013 as a rotating prix fixe concept that tours the culinary regions of Mexico. Torres and Galicia were named Food and Wine Best New Chefs in 2017 and were James Beard semifinalists in 2018 and 2022. Mixtli earned a Michelin star and the Michelin Service Award in the inaugural 2024 Texas Michelin Guide and was named a James Beard Outstanding Hospitality finalist in 2024. Torres also founded El Paso Family Meal, an annual charity dinner that raises funds for migrant families on the border.
Mike Diaz is the executive chef of Oseyo in Austin, a Korean-American restaurant he has led since its 2019 opening. Over 20 years in the Austin food industry, he has worked with McGuire Moorman Hospitality, Olamaie, Bufalina Due, and Dai Due Taqueria. At Oseyo, his cooking bridges Korean and Mexican culinary traditions through rotating specials that draw on his background and the restaurant’s Korean-American identity.
Episode Overview
In this Family Meal edition of Chef’s PSA, André Natera sits down with Gabe Erales, Rico Torres, and Mike Diaz for an unfiltered roundtable on what it actually looks like when accomplished chefs are running serious restaurants while also navigating recognition, community responsibility, and their lives outside the kitchen. The conversation covers the aftermath of Michelin recognition and how it changes expectations both internally and externally, the role of humor and comedy in keeping a kitchen team human, and how each chef thinks about giving back to the communities that shaped them.
They get into culinary innovation through fermentation, microgreens, and byproduct-driven cooking, the honest realities of work-life balance for working chefs and operators, and Mike Diaz’s parallel career as a stand-up comedian and what the kitchen and comedy share in terms of timing, reading a room, and surviving pressure.
Topics covered in this episode:
- Life after Michelin recognition and how it reshapes the pressure and expectations chefs carry
- Rico Torres and the founding of Mixtli’s rotating regional Mexican prix fixe model
- Food and Wine Best New Chefs 2017 and how that recognition shaped the trajectory of Mixtli
- El Paso Family Meal and the role of chefs in building charitable community infrastructure
- Culinary innovation through fermentation, microgreens, and byproduct cooking
- Comedic relief in the kitchen and how humor functions as a survival tool in high-pressure environments
- Mike Diaz’s transition from executive chef to stand-up comedian and what the two disciplines share
- Work-life balance for chefs who are operators, community builders, and creative professionals simultaneously
Guest
@g_erales / @oido.co
@rico__torres / @elpaso_familymeal
@oseyoaustin / @cantinflado
Subscribe to Chef’s PSA on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/@ChefsPSA?sub_confirmation=1
Shop Chef’s PSA Merch
https://shop.chefspsa.com/
Chef’s PSA Website
https://chefspsa.com/
Listen on Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/show/5KSFsCD3tLUPNSRi6Bcomu
Listen on Apple Podcasts
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/chefs-psa/id1451691585
Watch on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/@ChefsPSA
Listen on Audible
https://www.audible.com/pd/Chefs-PSA-Podcast/B08JJNXJ4K