For Manuel, cooking begins at home. Raised between his mother’s stove and his grandmother’s recipes, he learned early that a kitchen is a place of generosity, memory, and care. His path was not a straight line: before he could dedicate himself to cooking, he studied a different career, one his family believed offered more security. But the pull of the kitchen never left him.
Today, he leads the restaurant that carries his name, where a fine dining tasting menu is built on the flavours of the Caribbean, of home, and of identity. Together with Rafa, he starts from childhood memories and traditional dishes, then lets the dishes evolve while keeping their roots at the centre.
At Manuel, nothing is hidden and nothing is done alone. Recipes are shared freely, teams are built with the best and most ambitious young talents, and every dish carries a simple belief: the greatest reward in cooking is making someone else happy.
The Best Chef: Manuel, where does your love for cooking begin?
Manuel Mendoza: At home. If I hadn’t grown up next to my mother, watching her cuisine, I probably wouldn’t be a cook today.
What made me fall in love with cooking was watching my mother cook, watching my grandmother cook, and watching my grandmother teach my mother some dishes.
Being immersed in a kitchen with four burners, spending the whole day cooking, that is what gave me the motivation.
Perhaps if I hadn’t seen that, I would now be a business administrator. And perhaps I’d be happy. But I discovered cooking.
The Best Chef: Your path to the kitchen wasn’t immediate. How do you look at it today?
Manuel Mendoza: Things could have turned out differently. I could have been a cook straight away, without studying something else first, if they had supported me from day one and let me study cooking.
My father wanted me to study a career with a foundation. So I did my homework, I finished my studies, and I handed him my diploma. Then I told him I was going to do what I wanted.
But I think everything happens for a reason. It was all meant to be.
The Best Chef: What was the moment you realised cooking was your path?
Manuel Mendoza: It was when I discovered that you could take potatoes, cook them, add milk, mash them and turn them into a puree. Then you add salt, add butter, stir it all together and taste it.
That’s when I discovered there was magic, happiness, and passion.
There was a reason to be happy, and that reason was to make someone else happy.
The Best Chef: What do you remember most about your mother in the kitchen?
Manuel Mendoza: Above all, I never saw her get angry in the kitchen. If you reached in to pinch a piece of chicken or grab a spoonful, she’d say, “You’re going to cut it, ruin it!” Those were the only times she got annoyed, and it wasn’t because she was fed up with cooking.
There was never a complaint about being bored or tired of cooking. The only complaints were from people sneaking in to eat things before they were ready.
She never stood still. For First Communions and birthdays she was always making something herself, sometimes not to save money, but because she wanted to make the food she wanted to make. And when you are eating and you see her face, watching closely to see if you liked it, that is the real satisfaction.
The Best Chef: How do childhood memories shape the way you create?
Manuel Mendoza: They have played a huge role. When we create dishes at Manuel, Rafa and I always think about our childhood. We move away and think. Some things work straight away, others don’t, so we keep thinking and experimenting.
But in the end, we always come back to the same core, back to our roots.
That is what works for us today. We may have something avant-garde, a new flavour, but the roots remain firmly at its heart.
The Best Chef: What is the greatest reward of cooking in your family?
Manuel Mendoza: The greatest reward for a grandmother, for a mother, is seeing her child, her grandchild, or her guest happy. That is what I learned at home, and it is what I try to bring to Manuel today.
Food is happiness.
Chef Instagram: @manemendozab
Restaurant Instagram: @manuelrestaurante
Restaurant Website: manuelrestaurante.com
Restaurant Address: Cra. 55 #74-125, Nte. Centro Historico, Barranquilla, Atlántico, Colombia
