Mi Vida Hires New Culinary Director

All right. Looking forward to it. Thanks, Steve. Well, expect bold new flavors at D.C.'s Mi Vida. All thanks to new culinary director and award-winning chef Juan Pablo Loza. He is here to give us a taste this morning. Welcome. Hello. Hello. Thank you very much. Very excited to be here. Yes, I'm happy to have you. Mi Vida is definitely a fan favorite here across the D.C. area. Thank you. So talk about some of the new offerings that you all have now on the menu. Well, we brought some from Mexico, some bright new flavors, fresh, some Sometimes people think of Mexican food, maybe unhealthy, but it's the opposite. So we have a lot of fresh, healthy, and delicious flavors. Nice. Okay. And I see, listen, when you eat the rainbow, you know that you're getting some nutrition in your system. Exactly. So walk us through what you've brought today. So I brought some of the new items. Like, for example, we're taking some of the street food and some also from different regions of Mexico because it's so diverse. Yeah. Like pastor. The pastor is traditionally a taco, so we did like a barbecue ribs with pastor. So it has pineapple, cilantro, jalapeños. We're also doing, this is a take on a crab cake and tacos. They had a baby, so we have the crab taquitos. These are new dishes. Great to share or also great to just for yourself. Yeah, yeah. And we're showing also the carnitas. Carnitas is traditional. In tacos, but here we do it as a main course, so it's the carnitas in a bowl, the way how we serve it with some salad, orange, tomatillos, basically inspired on the salsa verde, but make it in a salad. I love how you don't hold back on the portions, too, at Mi Vida. Exactly. Well, that's part of also Mi Vida. We have some small portions, some things to share, and then from this one, the way how We serve it, we press it like this, we squeeze some oil. Orange juice on the top. Uh-huh, and I noticed there's something on the orange. What's that? Yes, the spices that we normally marinate the chamorro. Yeah. And then, so people grab this, make a taco with it, or just eat it like that. Oh, I like that. I like that concept as well. Okay, and then over here you have a fresh salad that you want to make for us? So, what we want to talk about, it's, the bebida, it's always about, obviously... Beautiful design, but also the food, the taste has to be great. So we're showcasing a little bit of the different flavors that we have in different regions of Mexico, and that's what makes it so special. And I believe the authenticity, but also the refreshing. healthy approach that we're bringing. Yeah. They remind you the street food, but also home cooking and different regions of Mexico. And as a new culinary director and who also traveled, by the way, from Mexico to make all of this happen, what does it mean to you to bring some of that authenticity to places like D.C. and Philly and Virginia Beach? Well, you have been in Cabo also. So I live, I'm based in Cabo and I'm used to work for Obviously customers from Mexico, but also from different parts of the world, and that's what we're bringing to DC to bringing all these All this out. Authentic flavors with and we know what people is expecting, right? Obviously the people from the States are craving for some classics that we kept but we we brought some new dishes Okay, well definitely that those carnitas. I think we're gonna be a really big You will accept. Yeah, dig in. That's awesome. Well this This is amazing. We're going to jump to a quick break. Come back with you on the other side of the break and give you guys a little bit more information about Mi Vida. In the meantime, stay with us. We're back in just about two minutes.