Mendizabal is the owner and chef of Black & Orange Burgers at Dupont Circle as well as executive chef of Lima. Before coming to D.C., he was a physicist and mathematician in Cuba before escaping from the communist island nation on a raft. How did you decide to escape Cuba on a raft?
Pretty much you take a couple of inner tubes, put them together and hope for the best. We made oars out of four-by-fours. Of course we were scared. I don’t know, we just had conversations and one day, you jump. What moves you to do such a crazy thing? It’s never one thing that moves you when you jump into the water … it’s a lot of things together.
How are math and cooking alike?
They’re alike in the way that most people don’t think they should be. They’re both whimsical. You can take a piece of chicken and just put it on the grill, fry an egg and put some potatoes with it, or you can make it into an art form. Math, you do the accounts, but when you get to a higher level it’s very dreamy.
How did you get into cooking?
I come from a very classic Cuban family. My grandma used to have a restaurant, but once she got married she stopped cooking professionally. … So we always had good cooking growing up.
How did you move from dishwasher to head chef?
It was pretty much little by little. I moved from dishwasher to prepping. Then one night one of the chefs just left and I was there on my own and I just did it on my own. It took 16 years.
What do you think of the D.C. restaurant scene?
It’s very competitive because you have big chef names and a lot of people making a lot of good stuff. … It’s becoming a cook’s city, for people who wanna cook from the heart and enjoy it.
— Leigh Giangreco
