We recently connected with Danielle Duran and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Danielle, thanks for joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

The idea came About because my husband wasn’t a huge fan of Mexican food ., and me being Mexican was not having it . We applied to do dinners at a loft with a platform that would help
Us market the dinner . We needed a name for the concept , the idea and to do a tasting menu for them to try . I just had ideas things I thought could work . So my first dish I created was the elote agnolotti I figured if my
Husband ate pizza and pasta daily that I had to sneak the flavors into that.
After the first tasting we knew we were on to something , the flavors just complemented each other . It wasn’t a fusion it was thoughtful combinations I thought would taste good together .

Danielle, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I always had a passion for the kitchen , I loved helping my grandmothers cook dinner or helping my grandfather make tortillas for our snack . It made me happy to create . It wasn’t until my parents were going through a divorce that my journey began . I was planning to go to community college because culinary school was expensive , but my sister knew I had to fulfill my dreams and applied to cordon bleu for me . With a lot of hard work and dedication I took my journey to nyc and back to Los Angeles where I first began catering and then creating my hot sauce company which is something I grew up making . Then most recently opened our first brick and mortar which was a pop up for 6 years first .

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

It started as a pop up I would do while catering . Catering was the man in money and what kept the roof over our heads but the pop up was our passion the food I wanted to cook with no rules . 6 Tyeafs or hard work , blood , sweat and tears.but we never gave up . We pushed hard to make it into our dream restaurant and here we are today . Brick and mortar opened 7 months and we made infatuation and time outs best restaurants to open this year list .

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

We had a lot of people turn us down . It wasn’t easy at all finding funds or even at times just letting ourselves get down and rethink is this really what we want to do . Actually half way in the project we had someone want to pull out of the deal . We panicked we had to figure out other ways we could continue the construction without having to stop , we had one week we didn’t sleep were walking in egg shells to try to figure it out . It took a lot out of us but I couldn’t give up we made it so far ! We had a complete remodel and we were halfway there , things had to come together ! So we kept pushing . Thought of new ways we could continue and continued to hustle and do a pop up at another location to raise more funds ourselves . We never gave up even when we really wanted to . And I am proud we didn’t . To see our buisness flourish is the proudest moment for me .

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.amigaamorela.com
• Instagram: Amiga Amore la
• Facebook: Amiga Amore la

Image Credits
Nick gingold