Pati Jinich

Patricia Jinich (/ˈhinitʃ/ born Patricia Drijanski, March 30, 1972) is a Mexican chef, TV personality, cookbook author, educator, and food writer. She is best known for her James Beard Award-winning and Emmy-nominated public television series Pati's Mexican Table and her James Beard Award-winning PBS primetime docuseries La Frontera with Pati Jinich. Her first cookbook, also titled Pati's Mexican Table, was published in March 2013, her second cookbook, Mexican Today, was published in April 2016, and her third cookbook, Treasures of the Mexican Table, was published in November 2021.
Jinich is the resident chef at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington, DC, where she has run her "Mexican Table" live culinary program since 2007. She has appeared on The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Talk, CBS This Morning, Live with Kelly and Mark, All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and The Splendid Table among other media. Her food writing has appeared in The Washington Post and The New York Times. In May 2014, Jinich was invited to cook at the White House for President Barack Obama's Cinco de Mayo dinner. In May 2018, she cooked at the James Beard House in New York City for its Cinco de Mayo dinner.
Jinich was born and raised in Mexico City to a Jewish family. The youngest of four sisters, her grandparents were Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe. The two had originally met in Europe and then reconnected in Mexico. Her father was an architect who turned restaurateur, and her mother ran an art gallery.
Food was always an important part of Jinich's family life growing up. Her three older sisters pursued the culinary arts early on, but Jinich grew up dreaming of a career in academia. She earned a political science bachelor's degree from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México and a master's degree in Latin-American studies from Georgetown University, and she worked as a political analyst for the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington, DC think tank before switching careers.
She met her husband, Daniel Jinich, who is also Jewish-Mexican, on a blind date. They were married in Mexico City in 1996 when she was 24.
Jinich first began researching and cooking Mexican cuisine out of homesickness for her native Mexico City, when she moved to Dallas, Texas, with her husband. Soon, she was teaching Mexican cooking to friends and neighbors. At the same time, as she was writing her bachelor's thesis, she offered to help KERA, the Dallas public TV station, with a documentary on the Mexican Revolution, but they needed help with another project: the PBS series New Tastes from Texas with Chef Stephan Pyles, for which she became a production assistant.
Two years later, she relocated to Washington, DC, with her husband and their first-born son, where she resumed her academic pursuits, earning her master's degree from Georgetown and landing her "dream job" at the Inter-American Dialogue, but she never stopped obsessively thinking about food and enrolled at L'Academie de Cuisine in Maryland.
Jinich envisioned herself writing articles about Mexican cuisine and teaching it in her home kitchen, until she met with the executive director of the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington, DC, who encouraged her to bring her cooking program to the institute. In 2007, she launched her "Mexican Table" series of live cooking demonstrations along with multi-course tasting dinners, which she still runs today. The classes combine Jinich's skilled Mexican cooking with her knowledge of the country's history and regions. Each one explores a single topic—for example, dishes of the Mexican Revolution, a historical vanilla menu, or convent foods from colonial Mexico.
Around the same time, she started her blog about Mexican cuisine, which was followed by invitations to write about food for print publications and to give talks and cooking demos for radio and TV shows.
Jinich's charisma and intelligence caught the attention of television producers. After exploring different outlets, she decided APT was the right home for Pati's Mexican Table because of her commitment to authenticity and the independence the PBS and public-TV platform allows over the content of its shows. The first season of Pati’s Mexican Table premiered in 2011.
In Pati's Mexican Table, Jinich shares authentic Mexican cooking, along with Mexico's rich history and culture; her personal experiences and family life; and her ongoing conversations with cooks on both sides of the border. The series airs nationally in the United States on public television stations (distributed by APT) and on Create TV. It also airs on the Asian Food Channel in Southeast Asia, Food Network in Australia, TLN in Canada, and TABI Channel in Japan.
The Pati's Mexican Table series premiered in 2011. In 2017, Amazon added Pati's Mexican Table to its Amazon Prime Video Internet video on demand service.
In 2021, Jinich made her PBS primetime debut in a docuseries called La Frontera with Pati Jinich, where she travels along both sides of the Mexico–United States border to experience the region's rich culture, people, and cuisine, and reflects on the melding of cultures. Both seasons are available on demand through the PBS website and video app and on Amazon Prime Video.
Jinich's first cookbook, Pati's Mexican Table: The Secrets of Real Mexican Home Cooking, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in March 2013. The book is based on the traditional Mexican home cooking with which Jinich grew up, with many recipes gleaned from her childhood in Mexico City. It made Amazon's "Best of the Year in Cookbooks" list of 2013, the Washington Post's "Best Cookbooks of 2013" list, The Splendid Table's "Staff Book Picks of 2013" list, and Serious Eats "Our Favorite Cookbooks of 2013" list.
Jinich's second cookbook, Mexican Today: New and Rediscovered Recipes for Contemporary Kitchens, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in April 2016. Jinich explores both traditional and rediscovered Mexican dishes as well as reinterpretations and new takes using Mexican ingredients in this book. NPR's Maria Godoy said, "Mexican Today explores not just traditional fare but [also] the country's evolving cuisine and the many immigrant groups who have influenced it."
Jinich's third cookbook, Treasures of the Mexican Table: Classic Recipes, Local Secrets, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in November 2021. It is Jinich's most extensive cookbook yet, with recipes she has encountered in her travels all around Mexico including everything from world-famous dishes to local specialties unknown outside their regions. It was a New York Times bestseller and was named one of the best cookbooks of 2021 by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle Glamour magazine, and Epicurious.
Jinich lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with her husband Daniel Jinich and their three sons: Alan, Samuel ("Sami"), and Julian ("Juju"). Her sister Karen Drijanski is a chef in Mexico City. Her other sister, Sharon Drijanski, is a designer and has written vegetarian cookbooks. A third sister, Alisa Drijanski, is a pastry chef who is married to former Telemundo president Emilio Romano.