The road to ELITA!

Chef Raquela and the road to Elita! or Rocky, as she is better known as, started her culinary quest as a young border hopper. Her Jewish American Father and Mexican mother lived mostly in a border beach town in Mexico and hopped from San Diego to Los Angeles all throughout her very early years. Her mother’s magical kitchen always filled with neighborhood friends, tamales, and cakes were the initial stamp on her culinary psyche. The final destination in Los Angeles was always Aunt Irene! Where she experienced Mediterranean food for the first time. Aunt Irene was French Tunisian, cooked simply with high quality ingredients, a beautiful restraint; a great lesson for a young chef to be. She experienced people’s delight and shock as they tasted her food, she realized this would be a bargain chip as she navigated a much more unstable existence. Rocky was eventually adopted by an Israeli man and woman from Colorado. She left Mexico and spent her adolescent years in the San Fernando Valley, California, where her adoptive parents nurtured her love of the Culinary arts. By eighteen years old, she packed her car and set out to Culinary school in Denver, Colorado. During her four years at Johnson and Wales University, her adoptive father had moved the family to Israel. She joined them after she graduated and eventually opened the first Mexican catering company in Israel. After six years in Israel she followed her heart back to Colorado, a place that left an everlasting impression on her. Now Chef Raquela, ‘Rocky’ is fusing her two major culinary and cultural impacts; with ELITA Specialty Market & Kitchen. A delicious ode to a long road.