Kris Rudolph

Chef and Owner of La Cocina Cooking School

Kris lives and works in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico where she owns and operates El Buen Café, a restaurant and catering business she's had since 1991. Her cooking school, La Cocina, offers hands-on Mexican cooking classes.

Kris began her culinary teaching career at the University of Massachusetts, where she received a master's degree in Hotel and Restaurant Administration. She's taught Mexican cooking throughout the States, most notably at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City and various Whole Foods schools in Texas. Kris's classes and tours have been written up in Bon Appetit, Texas Monthly, Chile Pepper Magazine, the Miami Herald, and the Washington Post, to name a few. She received the IACP Special Recognition Award in 2013 and currently works for Tabasco as a recipe developer for their Mexican food section on the internet.

In her spare time, when she's not involved in an employee-related drama or cooing over baby pictures of her beloved baboon Betty, a foster primate in Africa, Kris leads culinary tours in Mexico and Europe.

Her literary achievements include three cookbooks: Recipes and Secrets from El Buen Café, Mexican Light, and Savoring San Miguel. She's currently looking for a publisher (if you happen to know anyone) for her memoir, "She Just Ain't Right." A chapter from the book was published in  Hippocampus Literary Magazine.

Kris firmly believes in the art of eating well and that not one bite or calorie should be wasted on mediocre fare. She discovered this at an early age while devouring a vat of butter with a mini-loaf of homemade bread that her grandmother prepared for her each day. Her parents were horrified at her over-zealous appetite, her grandmother so pleased she melted more butter. And that was just the beginning.

Kris's chosen path has led her to seek and many times find some of the world's best food. From pizza slathered in truffle cream in an off-the-beaten-track Tuscan village to the surprising simplicity of a perfect potato in Slovenia, she'll share with you her discoveries, as well as her culinary secrets, quirky stories and obscure travel-related knowledge.