Pati Jinich Does It All

Pati Jinich was a political analyst who hated her job, a Mexican immigrant who couldn't string a sentence in English, a terrible cook who kept having the same recurring dream: walking up narrow stairs into a kitchen where a pot of chicken broth simmered, the aroma filling the room, making her so sad she had to bite her lip to wake herself up. That dream—and the longing it represented—is what pushed her into cooking, which eventually made her one of the most decorated figures in food media. This year she was inducted into the James Beard Broadcast Media Hall of Fame, and she now runs three distinct television projects simultaneously.

Three Shows, Three Missions

Jinich's work splits into three separate projects, each with its own purpose. Pati's Mexican Table is the original: a cooking-travel show now in its 15th season. Each season she visits a different Mexican state, explores its food and people, then returns to her home kitchen in the U.S. to make recipes—sometimes classic, sometimes playful riffs on ingredients she discovered. She started it when she was "full of nostalgia and insane romanticism for Mexico," unable to speak English well, with no family nearby. Cooking Mexican food was how she made herself at home in America.