Oaxaca Kitchen in New Haven, CT | Southern Comfort

Prasad Chirnomula works alongside Aracely Rojas, who helped him open Oaxaca Kitchen.
Credit: Heath Robbins Chirnomula speaks quietly, often flashing a mischievous smile, and he exudes confidence (“I’m a very gutsy cook,” he says), but he talks with equal passion about the talents of his team. He also has an uncommon respect for home cooking. As a boy, he accompanied his mother, Laxmi, to the loud, messy, and colorful markets near their home in Hyderabad, India, where she taught him how to choose the best bitter gourd and okra and the freshest fish and goat. He sat by her side as she prepared their meals: watching, tasting, and asking questions. Then, at the age of 7, he startled his parents by turning on the stove and making dinner for them all by himself. Mother and son still cook together in her Connecticut kitchen. To him, she remains “the best cook in the world.” So when Chirnomula began to take an interest in Mexican food, he first went to home cooks. Even before he met Aracely Rojas, he took a trip to Oaxaca, where he met a woman named Beatriz Molina-López, who prepared meals for visitors in the villa he was renting there. He gave Beatriz shopping money each morning, and she returned each evening, arms laden with meat, fish, and produce from the markets, proudly wearing the chef’s jacket she’d purchased just for this job. Together, they sipped beer and roasted poblano peppers on hot charcoal, peeling the blackened skins. They made rice, soaked and cooked beans, grilled steaks, and rolled tortillas. Beatriz showed him different Oaxacan moles, each uniquely complex, enhanced by poblanos, chiles, almonds, sesame, pistachios, pine nuts, and chocolate—because mole, like curry, isn’t a single sauce. Chirnomula returned to Connecticut and began developing the recipes that would fill the menu of Oaxaca Kitchen. It went without saying that he would hire a home cook to work alongside him at his new restaurant.