About Malena Watrous

Gabriela Cámara is the chef-owner of Mexico City's most famous and trafficked restaurant, Contramar, and its sister restaurant, Cala, in San Francisco. Mentored by Diana Kennedy, Cámara has become internationally recognized as the leader of accessible yet sophisticated Mexican cooking. She has appeared in every major American newspaper and food magazine. In 2016, Cala was named one of Bon Appétit's 50 Best New Restaurants, Food & Wine's Restaurant of the Year, and a semifinalist for the James Beard Foundation's award for Best New Restaurant. In 2020, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Malena Watrous has worked as a recipe tester for Melissa Clark and written about food, books, and travel for the New York Times, Allure, Condé Nast Traveler and Salon. The author of the novel If You Follow Me, she leads the Online Writer's Studio at Stanford University, where she teaches fiction and food writing.