Susana Trilling

Name: Susana Trilling

Age: 55

Nationality: U.S. citizen

Living in: Oaxaca, Mexico

When Philadelphia-born Susana Trilling first came to Oaxaca in 1988, she “wasn’t thinking of starting a business,” she says. In fact, she was taking a break from her career as a chef and restaurant owner, which she’d pursued in New York and in Austin, Texas.

She’d come to Oaxaca to help out at a school for the disabled, with little thought of staying long-term. But Oaxaca, a colonial capital in southeast Mexico, drew her in. She loved the city’s beauty, friendliness and ancient traditions. “I felt like it was what the real Mexico was,” she says; “the heartbeat of Mexico.”

She stayed on, running a farm with her partner, and having a family. And that’s when her old skills came in handy.

“After I had my first son, I realized I had to work,” Susana says. The farm didn’t bring in enough income and “we had to eat.”

Opportunity knocked very casually. “We had a big party,” she recalls. “I cooked all the food, and someone said, ‘Why don’t you teach classes?’”

So she did. That was in 1993.

Her first students were local upper-class Mexican women who wanted to cook new foods. “They wanted to learn American food,” she laughs. “You know, stromboli, apple pie, pasta. We did a different cuisine every week.” For Susana, trained in some of the U.S.’s most multi-ethnic cities, this was a slam-dunk.

She swears that, when she first came to Oaxaca, she didn’t know that the city is famous for its cooking. But Susana’s maternal grandparents were Mexican, and she’s always loved the flavors and textures of Mexican food. Soon she was delving into the region’s complex cuisine. She switched to teaching Oaxacan cooking—still working out of her home, giving classes in her own kitchen.

Her big break came in about 1997, when she wrote an article for Chile Pepper Magazine on Oaxaca’s moles. A type of rich, complex sauce that can include several types of chile and even chocolate, moles are Oaxaca’s signature dish.

It gave Susana credentials and exposure to a wider audience. “Nobody took me seriously until I wrote that article,” she asserts.

In 1999, she snagged a book contract and an accompanying 13-part PBS series called Seasons of My Heart: A Culinary Journey Through Oaxaca, Mexico.

“I’d never done a book before,” she confides, “and it had to be finished to coincide with the television series.”

“I just threw everything I knew into it—all my recipes. Everything I’d learned in 15 years. People told me later, ‘You should have held some back. You could have gotten two or three books out of that material.’” The book still sells on Amazon and elsewhere, providing her regular exposure among foodie fans.

Revenues from the book and the PBS series enabled her to move the cooking school out of her house. Bit by bit, she constructed Rancho Aurora, her “temple of cooking.” It’s located about a 20-minute drive from Oaxaca, between two traditional villages.

Despite its famous food, Oaxaca had no real cooking school until Susana started Rancho Aurora. “Then everybody started copying me,” she says.

But she was the first. And she’s become arguably the best-known authority on Oaxacan cooking worldwide. Susana—and her recipes—have been featured on The Food Network, the BBC, and the Discovery Channel among others.

Today she gives cooking classes at Rancho Aurora as well as regional culinary tours around Mexico. (Care to cruise for vanilla in Veracruz or for chocolate in Chiapas? She has tours dedicated to each bean.)

By 2006 she was competing with as many as 25 cooking schools that had sprung up in Oaxaca. Many were run by people who just liked to cook. When the tourist trade dipped that year, most of these schools folded. Today only a few—which largely follow Susana’s model—survive.

Having a business based in a foreign country has certain demands. For Susana, it meant she had to “embrace the Mexican system,” she says, which has “lots of bureaucratic rules.”  And being located in a small community also has challenges. In Oaxaca, for instance, personal relationships count.

“Integrating into the community—that’s important,” she stresses. “You need to become part of the village and say hello to everyone.” You also “have to respect people, and give back…get with the flow… learn the language…”

Susana’s latest way to “give back” is a new product line. In Rancho Aurora the long dining table is covered in jars with sleek red and green labels. “We’ve just started this,” she says, waving her arm towards the table. The products are a red jalapeno jelly and a red mole paste. Delicious.

You can find out more about all Susana’s products and courses at her website.

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