Chef Gabriela Chamorro: 'If I have to choose 1,000 times where I want to live, that's going to be Dubai'

Dubai: She walked in, right on time, framed by the colonial interiors of her restaurant. A nervous energy bounced off her. It felt like a Frida Kahlo painting on the move. A firelight shone from within her — a steel tempered by years of control beneath her beaming smile, quirky socks, hiking boots, and traditional floral hair grip. The fiery Latina who learned to cook on the hip of her grandmother Teresita; who spent years chasing dreams so her father would “look”; the daughter of a revolutionary mother who knows in her bones that the kindness of strangers sometimes defines the paths we take in life. Chef Gabriela Chamorro is home. “Dubai is home,” she says with the look of a person who has finally found safe harbour. “If I have to choose 1,000 times where I want to live, that's going to be Dubai.” Nicaraguan by birth, she wears her Central American identity with pride. A viral sensation for her culinary skill in bringing her region’s cuisine to Dubai and the world, Emirates 24/7 was at the Girl and the Goose to understand what fires this 41-year-old to place Nicaragua on the world food map. And why her journey is almost a prototype for Dubai-It. Chef Gabriela Chamorro is home. “Dubai is home,” she says with the look of a person who has finally found safe harbour. “If I have to choose 1,000 times where I want to live, that's going to be Dubai.” Picture: Abdullah Al Matrooshi The verb ‘Dubai-it’ is officially defined as achieving something extraordinary with excellence in record time, which is symbolic of the Emirate. “Food has always been an important part of my life, and for that, I have to take you back to Nicaragua, where I grew up in the 1980s during the revolution. My mum had to join the army … to bring money home and also because she was part of that cause. In those complex circumstances, it was my grandmother who raised me until I was 8 years old. She was a cook herself, hired to work in the army’s kitchen, at a hospital, or for people with money. She would take me with her, and for me, seeing her cook was an expression of love. I just wanted to be like her. I remember my first time cooking rice with her when I was 6 years old. Those are the first emotional memories I have with food, and it’s all I ever wanted to do.” Her mother became a revolutionary in her late teens and met Chef Chamorro’s father in the army. A much older, senior officer. They never had a traditional marriage. As the revolution continued, times were tough at home, with days when there was just some bread and milk to eat. But that didn’t deter the Latin spirit. Chef Gabriela Chamorro with her dogs Strotie and Moxy Much later, when she was 15 years old, Chamorro established contact with her father, who paid for her private school education for a while at the behest of her grandfather. But by the time she reached university, she was back to funding her own life. Her mother wanted her to have a good education, so she had to say she knew flamenco to be granted a cultural scholarship to a private university. There she studied International Affairs and Diplomacy. Next pit stop — a job and perhaps discover the world. Dreams take flight “I love being Nicaraguan; it’s something I will never stop being — it’s what has given a story to what I do. But early on, I felt there was something else waiting for me outside, something calling me to the Middle East. I was working for American Airlines in the legal and agent department, and I took a short holiday to Argentina. I was in a city called Córdoba. Next to the hotel where I was staying, I saw this banner, along with this beautiful girl with red lipstick and a red hat. I was like, ‘It’s so beautiful, what is that?’ So I entered the room, and it was an Emirates open day; it was the first time I had heard about Emirates and about Dubai. I was like, ‘Oh my Lord, what is this? I want this!’” She got hired by Emirates as cabin crew. This was 2008 and Chef Chamorro was 24 years old. “It doesn't matter what you want in life, your lines are already written by God. I could have taken so many different paths, but I never knew that by keeping this passion of wanting to be a chef, working for an airline, and moving to Dubai, I would actually flourish and have the opportunity to follow my childhood dream. Humbly, I ask: how many people can actually say that they're living their childhood dream?” A dream fired by her farmer grandmother. Teresita doesn’t know how to read and write but is a living history of Central American cuisine, its ingredients and ancient cooking techniques — a repository of knowledge and Chef Chamorro’s “first culinary school”. She was cooking the fresh produce she grew and the rest was locally sourced. “If I have to go back to one of those memories of cooking with her, it was making nacatamal. It’s a corn-based dish, made after the corn is exposed to limestone, then formed into corn dough or masa. I can close my eyes and smell the limestone, feel the humidity in the air of the corn mac