Local Duo Takes Vegan-Mexican Cuisine and Cookware Nationwide
- Alondra Sanchez
- Apr 1
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 1
Two local women, one from this side of the border and the other from our sister city, Acuña, Coahuila, have worked to bring a taste of home to consumers across the country. Both women have led accomplished and impressive careers outside of Del Rio, now they’re ready to share some of that success with their hometown communities.
Founder and President of HERNÁN Mexico, Isela Hernandez, a Del Rio native who spent the majority of her career as a product developer for large companies in New York City, began her brand of Vegan Mexican culinary products 17 years ago, later moving back to Texas. Since starting the company, Hernandez and the brand have earned acclaim such as Sofi awards from the Specialty Food Association and recognition by the US State Department for her work with artisans and food producers in Mexico.
Chef Dora Ramirez, food blogger/influencer and classically trained chef originally from Acuña, studied at the Culinary Institute of America and worked in the culinary/restaurant industry in New York before coming back to Texas, spent the last 3 years gathering recipes and writing her Vegan - Mexican cuisine cookbook, Comida Casera, available for purchase now on Amazon, her website https://dorastable.com/cookbook/ the HERNÀN Mexico website, https://www.hernanmexico.com/ and other book retailers.
Isela and Dora have teamed up to promote the cookbook and HERNÀN Mexico’s products through bundles including a signed copy of Comida Casera and an authentic Mexican-made Comal, or bundles of HERNÀN Mexican hot chocolates and Mole products. Chef Dora Ramirez has also held book signings and events across San Antonio since its release.
Her latest book event will be taking place right here at home, with a book signing and promotional event in Del Rio, on Friday, April 4th, 2025 at the HERNÀN Mexico headquarters located in the Roswell Building at 139 W. Garfield. A second book event will be held in her hometown of Acuña on Sunday, April 6, 2025. “I think for both of us, I can say, we have always tried to stay connected to where we come from, my parents are there, we still very much have family and a life in the community, so to give a book presentation in Del Rio, where I wrote half the book, I asked Isela if she wanted to do it together and celebrate this event and this book, not only celebrate it but bring it to the community,” Ramirez shared.
“And it is going to be a celebration, we definitely want the community to know that it’s open to them, so we encourage people who are curious, who already know or don’t know about vegan Mexican food to come and celebrate that this was born in our border community, and is influencing the palates of the rest of the world,” Hernandez added.
Since meeting around 2017 at Muertos Fest in San Antonio, TX, the two have been working together to share their products and recipes with as large an audience as possible, with HERNÁN Mexico's products featured on The Food Network, The New York Times, Food & Wine Magazine, Telemundo, and more. The product line is sold in gourmet and specialty stores in the US, restaurants and cafes, online at www.hernanmexico.com and locally in Del Rio at Russell's True Value and the Whitehead Museum gift shop.
“I was there [Muertos Fest] with my family and stopped by [HERNÁN Mexico’s booth], and went up, looked at the boxes of mole and saw that they were vegan,” Ramirez shared about how the two met. “Then on the back of one of the boxes, I saw that it said that the headquarters are in Del Rio, and I was like, “What? How do I not know who you are? I gave her my little spiel about affiliate marketing and asking if we could talk more, telling her that I was from Acuña, and then from there we got in touch and started working as affiliate partners.”
Further expanding upon their working relationship, Hernandez told us, “There’s various ways we work together, our company [HERNÀN Mexico], hires Dora to create content for us. So if you go to our instagram, and TikTok @HernanMexico, a lot of our videos are made by Dora. We also do events and markets together, both of our food products are vegan so she promotes our products to her social media followers.”
The inception of Comida Casera, Dora’s cookbook came from a combination of her own vegan lifestyle, the recipes she had created as part of Dora’s Table, family recipes, and traditional Mexican cuisine and comfort foods, with a healthier, plant-based twist.
After her mother, who alongside her father, has been in the restaurant business for more than 30 years, was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, the idea to put a vegan spin on Mexican staple recipes really came together, “I was trying to get my mother to eat healthier, more plants, less meat, and she was the one that told me, “well why can’t you make all this vegan food Mexican?” because I was trying to give her tofu and to this day she refuses to try tofu again. And she was like, just make it Mexican, why are you struggling with it? So I started with my family recipes, the recipes from the restaurant, [Los Tacos Grill], and with time I expanded to include other regions of Mexico and learned about Mexican cuisine that’s naturally plant-based.”
One of the biggest challenges in the movement towards embracing plant-based and vegan cuisine in Mexican culture and in communities like Del Rio and Acuña is the belief that “real, authentic Mexican food” has to include meat or else it just isn’t true to the culture. However, historically, much of indigenous Mexican cuisine is and was plant-based, pre-colonization.
“When people think about veganism, they think of the American version of veganism, which is health and wellness focused, influencers promoting superfoods, they’re not really thinking about how we can apply that culturally to our own food,” Ramirez began. “It is difficult to convince people to try it because it is a lifestyle and mindset change. In the beginning it feels like you’re going against tradition and how you grew up, you know, how can you eat your abuelita’s pozole without pork?”
“When we go back to the indigenous roots of the cuisine, the basis of the cuisine is la milpa, the agricultural practice that is sustainable, it was how the indigenous people intercropped corn with tomatoes with squash and each plant complimented the other plant, it gave them special nutrients, helped repel pests, and that was the basis of the cuisine. Corn itself, when you go back to the recorded evidence of what was eaten, which there is very little of, you can find that the daily life of the indigenous person was you know, atole for breakfast, a tamal for work, and some kind of corn gruel, so it was mainly corn with the vegetables, the animals and meat was a complement to the diet but it wasn’t the main source of the diet until the Spanish brought their livestock and their bread.”
The book itself takes the reader on a journey through Mexico, “from the most iconic places to eat, the indigenous kitchen which is the basis of the cuisine, to the market, to street food, to home cooking and then an ode to Mexican restaurants, the paleterÍa, the panaderÍa, all the typical places to find good food to eat in Mexico.”
Both of these women are bringing the best of their culture and communities to the world through their products and ideas, beginning with their hometowns. By sharing Comida Casera and HERNÁN Mexico’s authentic Mexican-imported cookware, moles and chocolates with Del Rio and Acuña, they celebrate their roots while showcasing that successful and fruitful ideas and businesses can start right here in our border communities.
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