“My last chemo almost killed me in October, I felt the vitality being squeezed out of my vessel,” says Josh Gil, the Riverside-raised, pioneering modern Mexican chef who co-founded Miraté in Los Feliz.
Gil is reflecting on his grueling battle with colorectal cancer and his decision to bring back his anarcho-punk-rooted underground “Supper Liberation Front” dinner series, starting Monday, December 16th.
Gil was first diagnosed with Stage II cancer in July of 2022 while he was in Jalisco tasting the wares of different raicilla producers for his restaurant’s award-winning bar, Mirate, (#46 in the top 50 bars in North America), which he founded in Los Feliz. Now it’s progressed to Stage IV.
Nonetheless, Gil does not back down from a fight and strives to beat it. The chef is using the power of cooking to give him strength to overcome it all.
“I’m better than I was," he tells L.A. TACO. "I feel I am healing. Once I could stand again, I started cooking for myself… so soul-filling."
This will be Gil's first time doing an S.L.F. dinner in a decade and he is excited to get back into his punk rock cooking roots, especially since he is no longer involved with Mírate. The Supper Liberation Front takes its name from the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, a far-left political and militant group known for radically fighting for Indigenous rights and territory in Chiapas.
“Sharks die when they stop moving," Gil says. "I cook from my heart. It's an expression of my soul, like my nana.”
His S.L.F. dinner series was one of the first pop-ups of its era, among both Mexico and the U.S. dining scenes, starting in 2009 (around the same time chef Ludo LeFevre started his pop-up dinner series). The impetus for the pop-up was to remove all the fuckery from fine dining and strip it down to just the food.
The dinner’s flyer states: “Where the chefs are anonymous, so there are no egos. It has one menu, and each dish only exists for the evening, never been done before and never being done again.”
The first S.L.F. dinner took place nearly 30 years ago in a punk squat house in Riverside, where Gil grew up with his late brother, Gabe Gil, who was the frontman for the ska-punk band Falling Sickness and himself a chef.
Every week, he would have "anarchy dinners" with anarchists and revolutionaries in attendance, many of whom worked in the restaurant industry. Falling Sickness’s song “Runaway” was written about Josh Gil and the cutthroat, competitive and self-destructing nature of being a chef.
“A lot of the cooks have never been able to afford to eat at the nice restaurants they worked at, so I started the S.L.F. so they can finally enjoy fine dining as well,” Gil recalls.
The first dinner was $35 for four courses, with B.Y.O.B., like a good D.I.Y. punk show. Gil says that the idea of the S.L.F. was for it to be like a fight club in every city, with chefs following the same protocol.
“What distracts us from being present in a food experience?” Gil asks. “Is it pretentiousness? Price? Ego? Fuck all of that. The S.L.F. wants to eliminate potential distractions because everything you need is correct before you. So that all that is left is a blank slate to be painted upon with the experience of being present.... because that is a gift. And ‘tis the season.”
The first six-course dinner will be held on Monday and will have two seatings (6 PM and 8:30 PM) at an undisclosed location. The meal will be paired with Baja California wines made or selected by respected winemaker Lulú Martínez Ojeda, who will be present to pour and discuss the wines, which will include an experimental grape ale made with hops, a popular blanc de noir, a naturally chilled Nebbiolo, and a popular bubbly Blanc de Noir de Carignan, among others.
To make reservations for the S.L.F., send an email to supperliberationfront@gmail.com.
