By Yasmin Rincon

LOS ANGELES – Cuban chef Rolando Gonzalez has managed to captivate Southern California’s palate with Cuba’s most typical and traditional tastes.

Gonzalez began his gastronomic adventure in California in the year 2002 when he associated with actress and singer Jennifer Lopez to open the restaurant Madre’s in Pasadena.

Now, from his own establishment, Casa Don Rolando, the Cuban chef continues to offer Cuban flavors that taste like home cooking while capturing the essence of the island’s cuisine.

“I always say that it was Jennifer Lopez who made me a chef,” the 59-year-old Cuban told Efe, adding that he met the actress and her family in 1997 and have remained good friends ever since.

In her family get-togethers, Gonzalez always cooked the meals of his childhood: roast lamb, shredded beef, Cuban rice and black beans, steak and onions and chicken fricassee, among many other dishes pleasing to the actress’s palate.

“One day when I was cooking in Jennifer’s home we got the idea of opening Madre’s, which was a unique experience of which I have only the best memories. It was a great learning experience,” he said.

Dining at Madre’s was an endless parade of celebrities including Nicole Kidman, Christian Slater, Jay Leno, Carmen Electra, Chayanne, Jose Jose, Hillary Clinton, Alejandro Fernandez and many others, to all of whom Gonzalez served a little bit of Cuba through his recipes.

Now with his own restaurant in the San Fernando Valley, Don Rolando offers a menu 100 percent Cuban with a wide variety of appetizers and main dishes, as well as the Caribbean island’s very own drink specialties, all in surroundings recalling Cuba of the 1950s.

“I try to respect the originality of the food, I’ll never make anything that isn’t original. What I prepare preserves the flavor of my grandmother’s cooking, my mom’s meals, the flavor of family get-togethers in the Cuba of yesteryear, that flavor full of memories, meaning, the pure essence of a culture that I proudly keep alive,” he said.

For this chef the ritual of dining as a family, of taking the time to listen to your kids, to your parents, to know what everyone is doing is the secret of transmitting from one generation to the next the values, traditions, principles and everything else that makes a culture great and strong.

“I believe that at present, because of the pace of work, the economic demands and everything else, we have lost a lot of what would allow us to have a better society,” he said.

He said that his greatest satisfaction is when plates come back to the kitchen empty and clients express their gratitude full of emotion, often with such words as “you brought back my mom’s cooking.”

Chef Rolando Gonzalez prepared dinner for Jennifer Lopez’s marriage with singer Marc Anthony, and every time they can, they meet as before to enjoy good food and friendship.

Together with the actress, Gonzalez took part cooking on the popular TV show of Ellen DeGeneres, “but what I appreciate most is providing Latinos, Americans and people from all over the world the most authentic, vibrant and traditional of flavors from Cuba,” he said. EFE