Introduction

Domenica Rice Cisneros says she’s a proud restaurant entrepreneur who is in her early 50s. There’s a playful, ageless quality to her, with her hair in a long ponytail or two braids as she’s stirring a pot or expediting orders on the line at Bombera.

Bombera means firewoman in Spanish, a nod to the building’s history as a fire station. But in this kitchen, it’s mostly women who are on the line, working over the flames and saving diners from uninspired Mexican food. Even when the dining room in her Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant is packed, the kitchen looks like it’s filled with women friends cooking for a big party.

Rice-Cisneros, who traveled and worked in kitchens in Italy, New York and Mexico City, learned team style cooking at Chez Panisse, where she was a chef for six years. Drawing on pre-Columbian and French influences and a sense of exploration, Rice Cisneros takes simple ingredients and elevates them. Her roasted carrots with spicy almond misantla are a must-order at Bombera, and her pork belly taco from her first restaurant Cosecha became an international sensation. 

How do you define your cuisine?

I’m part of the California Mexican community here. So we’re Mexican, Chicanos and Chicanas, Mexican Americans but it’s very uniquely the way we were brought up. My family has been part of the food scene here in California for over 150 years. My family has been working in California either as farm workers or chefs in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. My dad and my uncle were butchers. Even though it was an urban environment in downtown LA, my  grandmother Carmen, a former farm worker, was still running her household like a farm. You make your own soap, you compost everything, you’re growing herbs and vegetables and she had two avocado trees–one of them is still alive.

What was the most important thing you learned from working for Alice Waters?

It’s an incredible, incredible team and that was back in 1998-99 when I started. That was like 25 years ago.  For me the important thing as a line cook, you want to stay inspired. A lot of line cooks would stay seven, eight, 10 years at Chez. That’s not normal. Most line cooks stay one year or a year and a half. That’s just the norm for line cooks. You’re there to study and learn and then you plateau. That was the main thing then at Chez, they would have two chefs in charge of each department plus Alice. That was like 11 chefs you’re dealing with on a weekly basis. They would share the week and rotate out. That was very inspiring to see how six different chefs interpret one ingredient like Bing cherries. Seeing all of this as a young chef it’s very intriguing and it’s very unique and it keeps you there. You don’t see that a lot. At restaurants it’s usually one voice. I’m really proud of Chez, they’re still working with a lot of great chefs and sous chefs and making room for chefs and students to learn.

How do you and your husband Carlos Manuel Solomon, a professor of Southwest history, collaborate on your cuisine?

His writing has changed the way people talk about Mexican Californians and their importance and how they’re still here. We’ve always been here. It’s very special to have somebody kind of confirm that for me and for my community. And he’s also a great partner.

When he was doing his PhD he was writing on Pio Pico (Mexico’s last governor of California), who was Afro Latino and nobody wanted to talk about that. They still have issues. It is really a great pride to show the diversity here in California, and how important the Afro Mexicano California community is.

I grew up maybe eight blocks away from the Pico House. Carlos told me that was the first hotel Pio Pico ever built, and he put in a French restaurant. And I was just floored because this man was like a visionary not just for the city of Los Angeles but for the whole state. We did a book event for Carlos there and I talked to him about all the different influences that France has had on Mexico.

At the restaurant right now we have duck carnitas, which is one of the French influences which is duck. We also have pôt de crème, butter cookies and French wines.

But also Mexico has had a lot of influence on France too. You think about ratatouille which is peppers, zucchini and tomatoes. Three of the main ingredients come from Mexico. Over the past 500 years of world trade in ingredients, it’s not just gold and silver, but chocolate and vanilla. Carlos and I talk a lot about that.

Mexican food inspiration usually moves from Mexico to the US. Why do you think pork belly tacos, which you pioneered, became popular there?

I was very inspired by chef David Chang and he wanted to show how France, just like China, they isolate the butcher cuts. So when you read a menu in France, it’s almost like a celebration of the butcher and the second half of the show is about the sauce. So you talk about filet mignonette, chateaubriand, medallions and then there’s mushrooms or bearnaise and that’s the chef’s input. I really, really take pride in that because I come from alot oof butchers. My Dad was a butcher and my uncle was a butcher.

So I was seeing how we have techniques similar in Mexico as we do in France. And carnitas is one of them. And when I went to Michoacán, I saw that the really good carnitas places were hard to find, but they did isolate [the cuts]. They would do it for mostly the heart and the liver and make a carnitas out of that as well. They would do the whole pig. But I also noticed that they were chopping in the pork belly with the shoulder and they’re kind of just making that pork.

When I come back to open my restaurant in California I’m going to do that with a pork belly taco. I started that in 2010 and then I was very happy to see how it took off. It was already a big deal for David Chang to cook pork belly and there was pork belly everywhere. There was pork belly in French restaurants and always served with a certain sauce and vegetables. I was happy to show it in a Mexican way as a staple. It was a yellow corn tortilla, pickled onion, tomatillo salad and pork belly. We are sharing information via TikTok or Instagram. It makes it very international. Now in Mexico everybody has a version of a pork belly taco.

What’s your advice for women chefs balancing career and family?

That’s the one thing I have no advice on. I completely failed on that part of life. It’s impossible to be a mom and chef at the same time, but I try.

Did you purposely close on Tuesday to avoid the “Taco Tuesday” trope?

It’s interesting. It’s also an Italian thing to be closed on Tuesdays. I don’t know why they do it. Tuesday happened because I didn’t want to lose my industry night, which is Monday. I get to see a lot of other chefs and take care of them also. Tuesdays I go to the farmer’s market and do bookkeeping and make chorizo.

It’s very hard to find a team and I’m very [lucky]. None of it is from Craigslist or forced. It has to happen organically. But Sundays none of of my staff will show up. Have you tried to get a Oaxacan grandma out of the house to make tortillas on a Saturday night? I asked a friend to help me find someone to make tortillas on Saturday night. He said ‘Why don’t you ask me to find you a white tiger? That would be an easier task.

How has Bombera escaped the “Mexican restaurant curse” of only being seen as a place for inexpensive foods like tacos and nachos?

In 2009 and 2010 with my first restaurant [Cosecha] I was so nervous about what I was going to put on the menu because it’s like putting your head on the chopping block. Especially in the Bay Area, critics can be very brutal. And then I realized that the hardest part of this process was getting the place open, getting through permitting. So for me, that was freeing. I am a chef, I know what I’m doing. So what is the conversation we’re having with the neighborhood and are we relevant?

I can’t force my restaurant on them and then blame the neighborhood.  Am I relevant to who lives here, who works here? What are the other restaurant owners doing so we’re not repeating?

And Oakland I definitely shop and work and eat and live here in Oakland. I put all my focus on my neighborhood. And thankfully my neighborhood has always reciprocated. They’re smart and well traveled.  They’re showing up to tables. They’re supporting the crew and I’m just so grateful that I’ve started this journey and was able to start here. I do feel like there are high-end Mexican restaurants that do have staying power. There are a lot of amazing places I love like Damian (very fancy) in Los Angeles and Colibri Mexican Bistro in San Francisco. We have some amazing chefs doing work at all price points. There’s room for all of it. There’s room for taco trucks and there’s room for us, a neighborhood restaurant with a big cocktail list.