We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Joshua Lozano. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Joshua below.
Joshua, appreciate you joining us today. Can you tell us about a time that your work has been misunderstood? Why do you think it happened and did any interesting insights emerge from the experience?
My whole life I have been misunderstood, I come from a long blood line or rebels and artists. Be it my moms father escaping nazi Germany as a small boy, my grandfather on my dads side turning down the family fortune and business to hop the Mexican border 17 times. The most prominent story of my family my great grandfather single handedly saving 20+ men in a concentration camp; where he and his team were “commissioned” to hand carve money plates for hitler to print his own money, he told his team of men to always make a small mistake to keep the project on going then hitler was finally killed. Since childhood I was always the underdog, in sports and school and relationships and this story has continued into my adult life. I have always been chosen second or third or last but always been apologized to after the fact saying that they should have chosen me first.
I have since adopted the “lowlife” self branding not in terms of being a dirtbag but in terms of the underdog. In my career as a chef I could not afford to go to culinary school; coming from lower middle-class hispanic family in Southern California. I was hungry and passionate about cooking and serving others. I decided to go to the school or hard knocks and worked 2 full time cook jobs whilst cooking for my family anything they wanted in between jobs and studying 3-4 hours every night. On my day off I would taste every spice in my cabinet by the heaping spoon full, dry mustard, dried herbs, cayenne, ginger powder etc. This was my schedule for the first 6 years of my career. I still (habits from back then) say yes to cooking any event no matter the concept. In the past it I have cooked damn near everything from a 1/2 cow for 600 people or bone in short rib burritos for 4k people to sourcing material in the middle of the woods during winter to build an oven of stone and cook for a private group. Having a “oui chef” mentality has lead to many adventures and meeting new mentors all over the country. I would want my legacy and story to be you can look like a piece of shit and come from nothing and still make your dreams come true. Like the famous saying goes “passion, action and the noble pursuit or creativity will lead to a successful and admirable life.”
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I have been cooking all my life whether with my mom and grandma in California for the family or visiting my “step” grandma on her 60 acres of state protected woods in upstate NY where she taught me how to forage and cook with a live fire on a cast iron stove. Cooking however is not where my working career started. My life choices however have always been in the service of others. I first tried to be a preschool teacher so I could teach in my little brothers class to keep an eye on him because he has autism. This fairly quickly changed to trying to become a pastor; after I could no longer afford school or any kind I decided to find a job or two serving in restaurants and cafes. During this part of my life as a server I was frequently getting tattoos from London Reese (at the time in LA). London moved down to Orange County and started working at Vatican Studios. He quickly noticed that the shop needed from managerial help so he called me. I worked at Vatican Studios for a few years catering to artists every need in and out of the shop. Every Friday my boss Franco Vescovi would hand me a few hundred cash and tell me that there will be X amount of people in the shop and he wanted me to cook for them. No culinary background whatsoever I just knew what I liked to eat and hoped people would also. My last year of employment at Vatican, Franco asked me to cater the Christmas Party where he told me would have a guest list of 65 people…It wound up being 92. I had no help and cooked for two straight days alone and fell in love. The following week I went to all my bosses and told them I want to leave the shop and pursue a life in cooking professionally.
I haven’t looked back since either. I have experience in fine dining restaurant and fine dining private catering, yachts, whole animal BBQ, farm to table cooking, Mexican cuisine, Korean cuisine and most importantly to me the first food of America which was BBQ and slave food. I am also a self taught live fire pastry cook which I have not seen anybody do yet. The mission statement for my career is “Good Food for Good People” does not matter when where or what cuisine if there is a hunger I will go and cook.
The biggest thing that I feel sets me apart from my competition is my ability to adjust and think on the fly. Meaning if there is some immediate change that normally derails anybody else I can see adjust and adapt to the situation. Also my creativity and palette is unique and not comparable to any immediate competition in my field. For example one of my favorite dishes to create is my PB&J inspired savory donut. It is a Pate a Choux filled with foie gras pate and a peanut butter pastry cream glazed in raspberry. On the surface it looks like a regular donut tastes of umami and rich velvety glory, with a hint of sweetness.
Having the self proclaimed “lowlife” branding I always look for a way to take a cheap or otherwise frowned upon ingredient and reinvent it to be able to sit at a fine dining table. One of my favorite recipes to cook for myself in the summer is cast iron clams made with Mexican chorizo shallots butter and Pabst Blue Ribbon. It is a dish that you can spend anywhere from 20-35 dollars at a fine dining restaurant cooked with delicious white wine and guanciale or lardo but instead I use the real chorizo complete with crunchy skin and PBR. My goal culinarily and in my life is to show people that just because the price tag isn’t high does not mean that it can’t be better than that.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
Being an artist in the kitchen the most rewarding aspect of it for me is the fact that cooking as alchemy or short lived. My famous pulled pork tacos takes about 10-12 hours start to finish to get them on your plate, and in two minutes its gone and will never exist as it was ever again. Maybe my smoking wood was to fresh and yielded a small change in flavor maybe the cook added a little more salt then normal, or that pork shoulder had 4 oz more fat that got rendered down. The plate I create for you will never exist the same exact way every again. It is the most intimate romantic concept to me, it is a moment I can share only with my guest in that moment.
My mother “also an artist” showed me the documentary of nature artist Andy Goldsworth when I was way to young and it built a foundation for the rest of my life and created my constant pursuit or perfection in an imperfect world with imperfect tools and ingredients. In his documentary he says “my sculpture can last for days or a few seconds – what is important to me is the experience of making. I leave all my work outside and often return to watch it decay.” Hearing this seeing the amazing sculpture he creates was so inspiring and 100% relatable towards cooking. Like Andy I have spent so much time studying how ingredients interact with each other and I can spend a lot of time creating something unique and surprising to watch the joy on the faces of people who eat and sharing that moment with the individual and to know we will never share that same moment together again is priceless.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
Fuck it is the best advice I can give. Every human is connected to creativity and creativity is nothing more than energies and vibrations surrounding us all of the time. All you have to do is recognize that, tap into it and let it inspire you to make something. I believe all noncreatives are not incapable or being creative but more unwilling to acknowledge it. So, Fuck It and lets be weird. Have fun, get confused, get frustrated, fall in love, feel proud and experience what its like to create. Especially for men, because women have the best opportunity to create by making humans. We are all wired to pro”create” but for men its a small moment in time where you donate to creation but its not creation itself. However, in art all genders, all styles of life have the ability to tap into what creating feels like. Whether you make your prospective creation known to the world or not is your choice but life is to short and don’t deny yourself the freedom of expression through poetry, painting, spray cans, tattoo machine or a plate of food.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: Joshua_L0wlife
Image Credits
Aaron Alva Alan de Herrera Andre D’Agosto Myself