Michelle “Mica” Chavez has been cooking in Santa Fe—a place where “food, culture, people, and landscape are inseparable”—for almost 20 years. She began her cooking career in the San Francisco bay area at age 14 when she was hired to roll pasta at the restaurant of a family friend. By 21, Mica was the Sous Chef in an upscale Northern Italian Ristorante in Walnut Creek, CA. In 1996, she returned to her hometown of El Paso, TX and became Executive Chef of Café Central for seven years. In 2003, she was the Chef De Cuisine for the Professional Golf Association Champions Dinner in Rochester, NY, and she has cooked for numerous notables including presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, and Vicente Fox of Mexico. In addition to being a private chef, Mica is an instructor at Santa Fe’s premier recreational cooking school. While Mica is passionate about food from many regions, her first love is southwestern food. She is an expert on the various types of chiles (they aren’t peppers!) and the culture and food history of the region. Her favorite dish is green chile—the hotter the better. Mica spends any free time she has hiking with her rescue dogs or gardening. She also loves to windsurf, ski, mountain bike, and travel. She will forever call Santa Fe “home”.