810: The Boss of Your Kitchen con Omi Hopper

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**SPEAKER_2** (0:30)
Hey, babes, it's Paris Hilton. So I was checking my points balance in the Hilton Honors app the other day, and yeah, I've got about a billion, which feels excessive, even for me. Just kidding. You can never have too many Hilton Honors points, and I want to do something iconic this summer, so I'm giving away all my Paris points. Just find somewhere you've always wanted to stay, then go to my socials or Hilton's and tell me about it. Just make sure you're a Hilton Honors member, and I might be sending you Paris points, because when you want points that make your summer even hotter, it matters where you stay.

**Omi Hopper** (1:08)
For example, there's never been a Puerto Rican cookbook to be a New York Times best seller. How is that possible?
Given what I know and given the people that I know and who I've met along the way, I shouldn't be saying that. But it hasn't happened.

**Aliza Abarbanel** (1:24)
This is TASTE. I'm your host, Aliza Abarbanel.
Omi Hopper is a Puerto Rican chef, social media influencer and food entrepreneur. You might know her as a semi-finalist on season two of Next Level Chef or from her popular cooking videos across social media, where she shares her takes on Puerto Rican classics. Today on the show, we talk about making her debut cookbook, Cooking con Omi, A Love Letter to Puerto Rican Home Cooking. Omi Hopper, This Is TASTE. Thank you for coming on the podcast.

**Omi Hopper** (2:04)
Thank you for having me.

**Aliza Abarbanel** (2:05)
I'm so happy to have you on the show today. I have really been enjoying sitting down with your book and, of course, getting to know you through social media before that.
Before we get into anything, I often ask my guests to share an early food memory from growing up. Your book is full of so many wonderful food memories, but I'm curious if you have one to share that you think is really central to who you are, your relationship with food.

**Omi Hopper** (2:29)
My relationship with food is especially Puerto Rican food. It always feels like a welcome home type of meal.
One in specific that I can always go back to is the summers that I would go back to Puerto Rico and spend with my grandmother. She would always say to me, I made your favorite and it was Vianda con Bacalhau, which is the boiled root vegetables with the pickled codfish, and peppers and onions, and it's got this tangy vinaigrette and it's amazing. That is 100 percent my favorite food memory of all time.

**Aliza Abarbanel** (3:14)
I loved getting to read about your family in this book and especially about your grandma. She sounds like the Puerto Rican grandma that I've never had, but always wanted to have, so I love that memory.

**Omi Hopper** (3:25)
She would have loved to have you because she was one that loved having people over. The more the merrier for her. She was always the bell of the ball.

**Aliza Abarbanel** (3:35)
Yeah, it seems like maybe a bit of a family trait for you as well. Something I enjoyed in this book was just reading about, you've had this lifelong interest in food, but it wasn't always kind of a professional focus for you. And I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about that moment when you decided to kind of be sharing your food online and making it into more of a career or a part of the work that you do.

**Omi Hopper** (4:01)
I was a professional makeup artist for 10 years. Loved, loved, loved my job. Before that, I was in banking. And that was kind of like right out of college. And it was safe, secure.
But it turned out that after being there for so long, when I had my third son, I was giving my entire paycheck to the babysitter. And I recognized that that was, it made no sense to do that. Now, moving forward to when I became a makeup artist, it kind of gave me the hours that I needed to be a mom and to still be home. But also, you know, most people are getting their makeup done for events later at night. So it was kind of perfect. And when weekends, now COVID happens, the world is in complete shutdown. Everyone is home. I had a makeup studio. I also worked at Sephora as an education manager. And all of a sudden all of that stops and I'm home taking care of my husband who had just had a knee replacement surgery.