Zingerman’s Roadhouse is pleased to partner with Literati Bookstore for a one-of-a kind event, as Laura Tillman discusses her acclaimed book The Migrant Chef: The Life and Times of Lalo García with Lyndsay C. Green of the Detroit Free Press. The event will be held at the Literati Bookstore in Ann Arbor.

Tickets for the special event are $40 and include courses prepared by Chef Bob Bennett and inspired by The Migrant Chef. Also included are Roadhouse mocktails, as well as $10 off the book if purchased on-site at Literati Bookstore. Craft cocktails will be available for purchase, featuring Anteel Tequila from Detroit.

Do not miss this unforgettable evening of delicious food and fulfilling conversation with a talented author and a James Beard award-winning journalist. Tickets are limited!

A book signing will follow the program.

About the book: Born in rural Mexico, Eduardo “Lalo” García Guzmán and his family left for the United States when he was a child, picking fruits and vegetables on the migrant route from Florida to Michigan. He worked in Atlanta restaurants as a teenager before being convicted of a robbery, incarcerated, and eventually deported. Lalo landed in Mexico City as a new generation of chefs was questioning the hierarchies that had historically privileged European cuisine in elite spaces. At his acclaimed restaurant, Máximo Bistrot, he began to craft food that narrated his memories and hopes.

Mexico City-based journalist Laura Tillman spent five years immersively reporting on Lalo’s story: from Máximo’s kitchen to the onion fields of Vidalia, Georgia, to Dubai’s first high-end Mexican restaurant, to Lalo’s hometown of San José de las Pilas. What emerges is a moving portrait of Lalo’s struggle to find authenticity in an industry built on the very inequalities that drove his family to leave their home, and of the artistic process as Lalo calls on the experiences of his life to create transcendent cuisine. The Migrant Chef offers an unforgettable window into a family’s border-eclipsing dreams, Mexico’s culinary heritage, and the making of a chef.

Laura Tillman is a journalist and the author of The Migrant Chef and The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts. She began her career as a newspaper reporter at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2007, before moving to Mexico City in 2014. Her reporting, which focuses primarily on migration, justice, and food, has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Nation. She graduated from Vassar College with a degree in international studies and Goucher College with an MFA in nonfiction writing, where she is currently a member of the faculty. She lives in Mexico City with her family.

Lyndsay C. Green is the James Beard award-winning and Pulitzer finalist dining and restaurant critic at the Detroit Free Press, where she reviews Detroit-area restaurants, and shines a light on local food businesses.

Menu

Black Bean Sopes
Corn sopes topped with Camellia black beans & Cotija cheese.

Gazpacho
Shots of chilled tomato and cucumber soup.

Chips & Green Tomato Salsa
Ann Arbor Tortilla Company chips with green tomato and jalapeño salsa.

Event address: 

124 E. Washington

Ann Arbor, MI 48104