Find her at the Hollywood Farmers Market.
At Dear Mama, a Los Angeles food stand and catering service offering plant-based Mexican dishes, Desiree Flores is working to make healthy, sustainable food accessible to a broad L.A. constituency, while expanding people’s understanding of what vegan food can be.
Flores stopped eating meat when she was seventeen after watching Fast Food Nation, the 2006 film exposing the health, environmental, and social damages caused by the fast food industry. “Coming from a family of immigrants, I can see the mistreatment,” Flores says, referring to the poor working conditions in the fast food and factory farming industries, not to mention the abusive treatment of animals raised on factory farms.
Boyle Heights, where Flores grew up, is a food desert, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It offered Flores few vegan menu options when she went out to dinner. But, inspired by her grandmother’s love of cooking, Flores learned to cook herself and adapted her grandmother’s recipes to be plant-based.
After earning a degree in Business Management from California State University, Northridge, Flores knew she wanted to start a business, but didn’t think about the food industry. Then she saw an advertisement looking for chefs to offer vegan tamales at a popup event in East LA. Flores got the gig, and it inspired her to turn what had been her vegan cooking hobby into a career.
“I realized that I really enjoyed recreating my family’s recipes and sharing them with people and giving them a little piece of who I am and where I was raised,” Flores says.
“I didn’t know it was going to go this far, but here I am and I’m really glad,” Flores says.
Dear Mama sets up a food stand at the Hollywood Farmers Market every Sunday. They also offer event catering, cooking classes, and meal kits. The menu’s vegan ingredients include jackfruit instead of meat and cashew crema instead of the traditional dairy-based crema.
When people question her food, Flores offers them a free taco and lets it speak for itself. The skeptics are often shocked that the taco is really vegan.
An important aspect of Flores’ work is making healthy food widely accessible. At theHollywood Farmers Market stand, there are often many unhoused individuals nearby who are in need of food. Unhoused people who are vegan can face an extra hurdle in finding nutritious meals, but Flores gives free meals.
Flores has faced some skepticism about her plant-based takes on traditional recipes. “Oftentimes people are a little standoffish, because there’s a stigma to veganism, especially in the Latino community, because a lot of the [traditional] dishes have meat,” Flores says.
When people question her food, Flores offers them a free taco and lets it speak for itself. Flores notes that the skeptics are often shocked that the taco is really vegan. “If you’re willing to be open minded about this, you’ll be more willing to try other vegan food,” Flores says.
Flores has even received her grandmother’s seal of approval, which is no easy task. “She was a little picky, so it was like telling a kid to eat their veggies,” Flores says. But once her grandmother tried Flores’ recipes, she said they tasted just like her original versions. Flores is confident that if other people give vegan food a chance, they’ll realize that they can make more ethical food choices without sacrificing flavor.
See her at the Farmers Market, and follow her here.
