Antonio Ramirez (he/him), known as Costillas, is a queer chef from Southern California who threads his Mexican heritage with the vast and diverse fabric of Los Angeles’s culinary cultures, creating food that both honors deeply rooted traditions and leaves room for imagination, innovation, and interpretation. 

Food has always been a vessel for Antonio, a way to introduce eaters to the culinary lineages of Michoacán and Tijuana, the birthplaces of his parents. Digging deeper, cooking is also a type of alchemy to make tangible and pay homage to the intersectional aspects of himself identified through his food and service. Antonio is a first generation Mexican American queer and transgender man, who fostered his cooking in the backdrop of a career as a psychiatric nurse in prisons and for adults who are developmentally disabled. Antonio’s approach to food holds these dualities. Drawing on the masculine and feminine experiences as a transgender man—likewise his Mexican traditions with his first generation experience in LA—has expressed through food that prioritizes balance with curiosity and transformation. 

Antonio’s family, partnerships and friends are the most fundamental inspiration for his food. Cooking is most primarily service to commemorate this community. He centers collaboration with fellow queer and BIPOC chefs and folks who are are working to reclaim contemporary Mexican cuisine. 

An integral part of this reclamation is a culinary experience that centers pleasure. This works to dismantle oppressive systems by de-stigmatizing the ways food can be an extension of sexuality, romance and kink. By linking community, history and selfhood in cuisine, Antonio is incorporating spirituality at large. Ingredients of both personal blessings and ancestral gifts are layered into cooking that embodies a spiritual practice of devotion and service.