Chef Maggie

About Maggie

Maggie learned tamales the way most people who make great tamales learned them: standing at a counter next to her mother and grandmother, spreading masa on husks until her arms hurt, being told the masa was too thick, and doing it again. The recipes in her kitchen today came down through the women in her family, generation to generation, and they are cooked the way those women cooked, in the spirit of Like Water for Chocolate: with full attention and with ingredients she trusts.

What started as tamales for family became tamales for friends, then for a Saturday order list, then for a kitchen of her own. She built Maggie’s Tamales & Catering around one rule that has not moved since: fresh, from scratch, every time. The masa is mixed the morning it is used and it is gluten-free. The pork and chicken are slow-cooked in-house. The chiles are toasted that day, and sometimes they are specialty chiles that came up from Mexico in grandpa’s suitcase.

Maggie’s tamales are known around North Dallas for being BIG, meat-first and clean: reviewers write about “lots of chicken breast meat” and “amazing (not too much) masa”. She takes that as the highest compliment, because it means the recipe survived the scale-up.

What she does every day

• Runs the kitchen at 2100 N Greenville Ave, Ste 202, Richardson, TX 75082, a delivery-only catering kitchen.
• Reads and prices every catering request personally, usually the same business day.
• Plans holiday production so that Thanksgiving and Christmas orders go out hot and on time.
• Writes the Insights articles on this site: headcounts, budgets, reheating, traditions, and what makes a tamal authentic.