Stephanie Xiques has cooked it all: weddings, parties, corporate events, farmers’ markets, baptisms, quinceañeras, funerals.

Who doesn’t know and love her seamless fusion of Puerto Rican, Cuban, Mexican, and other pan-Latin flavors? Who hasn’t stood slack-jawed before her and her husband Pedro’s deftness on the plancha? Who hasn’t watched her throw down with the wildest hellbenders in the clerb? Well, I know and have witnessed all of those things.

She cooked at her grandmother’s funeral.

She once worked a taquiza in a swarm of angry cicadas.

I just attended a karaoke party earlier this month, and after her crew finished their shift behind the taco bar, she and daughter, tortilla-maker Kylie, grabbed the mike and belted out a spot-on rendition of Whitney Houston’s “I Have Nothing.”

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