The Undercurrent # 1
A simmering space for legacy, culture, and culinary bochincheo.
We’re laying the foundation, story by story, recipe by recipe. Like the first flicker of flame under your caldero. This is how it begins. Soon, we’ll go deeper into the real meat of it all: how food has always shaped our world—from colonization to celebration, diaspora to survival.
Expect sourcing gems, thoughtful interviews (because amplifying voices is part of the work), and reflections on why recipes are more than just instructions. We’ll be exploring our current foodscapes, too. What’s shifting, what’s surviving, what’s being reimagined not just culturally, but globally.
If you’re feeling this journey so far, we’d love for you to consider becoming a paid subscriber—or even a founding member. That gets you full access to all upcoming posts and a front seat at our upcoming Tropicaleo Chats—where questions fly, stories simmer, and the culinary bochincheo is always on.
And this? This right here is The Undercurrent.
Not just a newsletter, but a pulse check. A dispatch from wherever we’re standing—what’s been on our minds, what’s changing in our kitchens, or reflections on the landscapes we’re navigating through food and memory. Sometimes it’s a story. Sometimes it’s a quiet reflection. But it’s always grounded in sabor, history, and the relentless power of memory.
We’ve already seen from your comments and DMs that you’ve got stories worth telling. And trust us—they’re inspiring what’s coming next.
So... vamos. Let’s get into it.
So let’s begin with what simmers beneath it all. Not just ingredients or techniques, but the weight of where we come from—lo que cargamos, lo que cocinamos, y lo que recordamos.
There’s a weight to legacy—sometimes heavy, sometimes light, always present.... It lingers in the seasoning of a well-worn caldero, in the cadence of a lullaby sung in a language that feels like home (sana, sana colita de rana), even if we don’t fully understand all the words. It’s in the way we knead arepas, roll pasteles, or turn to the same cure our abuelas swore by when a cold sneaks in. Legacy is inheritance beyond wealth. It’s memory, ritual, and the stubborn refusal to forget.
In the Caribbean, our histories are layered, woven from resistance, survival, migration, and the ever-present question of identity. What does it mean to carry the recipes of our ancestors, to honor their techniques while also making them our own? How do we balance tradition with evolution—respecting the past without becoming trapped in it? I call it the the “in between” because we’re not here nor there.
For those of us who cook, who write, who tell stories, the weight of legacy is in our hands every day. It’s in choosing to preserve a dish that could easily be forgotten, in translating oral histories into written ones, in making sure our children know the taste of their own roots even worlds apart. But legacy is also about permission. To adapt, to reinterpret, to claim our heritage in ways that make sense for the lives we live now.
This month in Tropicaleo Food, we’re exploring that weight—the beauty and burden of what we inherit. We’ll dive into recipes passed down through generations, the histories carried in the ingredients we take for granted, and the ways we make space for both tradition and innovation at the table. Because food isn’t just sustenance—it’s lineage. And we hope to spark conversation, we will be opening our chat soon as well as we look forward to the comments.
What legacies do you carry? What dishes bring you back to the people who came before you? What dish you cook just because your abuela, tío, neighbor, or abuelo made it for you— or one you’ve been trying to learn for a while now? What dishes make you remember your roots and why? Let’s talk about it. Let’s cook through it. Let’s keep the stories alive. We cant wait to have some culinary bochincheo about this!
Con cariño and curiosity that never stops,