A Seat at the Chef's Table: An Evening with Víctor Toriz Sánchez

It was a rainy evening in Mexico City, and Gaba was showing fully booked.

We hadn't come with any great expectations. Gaba was simply a name on a restaurant list I was carrying around, one of those places we'd heard was good and thought we'd try if the opportunity arose. We certainly didn't know anything about the chef.

We decided to try our luck anyway.

To our surprise, they found us a place and escorted us to the chef's table, a seat at the bar overlooking the kitchen.

And that is where we met Víctor Toriz Sánchez.

At the time, we had no idea who he was or quite how interesting his story was. We just knew we liked him.

He kept coming around from the kitchen, bringing us dishes himself and excitedly telling us about the ingredients. He was warm and genuinely curious, with the kind of enthusiasm that makes you want to listen. You could tell he was having fun with the food.

Gaba is clearly very good at the grill. Meat and fish were coming across the pass looking spectacular. But somehow we kept gravitating towards the vegetables, and I'm still not sure which I loved more: the grilled mushrooms or the heirloom tomatoes.

The mushrooms came with miso, salsa, matcha and baba ganoush. The tomatoes were paired with mamey (looks like an avocado with creamy red flesh), macadamia and flowers. There was kampachi tartare too, with dried Asian shrimp and other unexpected touches.

It was food that felt like fusion without ever trying to be fusion.

We would later discover why.

Víctor was born in East Los Angeles to Mexican parents and moved to Mexico City with his mother when he was 11. He eventually returned to California to cook, working at Bestia and Here's Looking at You, then spent time at Arca in Tulum before returning to Mexico City, where he worked his way up at Emilia.

His food carries all of those places with it.

When asked how he describes Gaba, Víctor says:

"I can't call it Mexican food, but I want it to FEEL Mexican."

That might be the best description of what we ate. There was a Mexican thread running through the dishes, but it was woven together with ingredients and ideas from elsewhere. Miso. Matcha. Dried shrimp. XO sauce. Flowers. Unexpected combinations that somehow felt completely natural.

We particularly loved the flowers. Little blue borage flowers, elderflower, squash blossoms, appeared as part of the food rather than simply decoration. There was a sense of curiosity about ingredients that seemed to run through the whole meal.

It turns out that curiosity is very much Víctor.

Before opening Gaba, he was even considering a restaurant devoted only to fish and vegetables. He says he loves fish and that filleting it gives him "a lot of peace." Sitting there eating our way through the vegetables, we thought he might have been onto something.

His path to Gaba wasn't entirely straightforward. He originally wanted to be a music producer, not a chef. His parents encouraged him toward culinary school instead. Later, after working in some of the best kitchens around, he was invited to stage at Noma.

Then came the disappointment.

He couldn't get the work visa.

But almost immediately, another opportunity appeared: his own restaurant.

Gaba opened in 2023.

Sometimes the thing that doesn't work out turns out to be the thing that sends you somewhere better.

What we didn't know when we walked through the door that rainy evening was that Víctor had a very personal relationship with cooking. He has said that he was an insecure child and that "cooking gave me a lot of confidence." He also talks about associating happiness with food, remembering Sundays in Mexico City with his grandmother, eating sopes and quesadillas after church while the family drank beer and played soccer in the street.

By the end of the evening, we weren't just interested in Gaba.

We were interested in Víctor.

And, naturally, before leaving, we asked him the question we always like to ask a chef:

Where should we eat next?

His recommendations went straight onto our list: Chozi and Lotti.

It's one of the pleasures of eating in Mexico City. Sometimes you don't need a carefully researched itinerary. Sometimes you just need to turn up on a rainy night, take the seat you're offered, and ask the chef what he loves.

That night, we happened to get the best seat in the house.

Gaba

Chef: Víctor Toriz Sánchez

⭐ One Michelin Star, Michelin Guide Mexico 2026

Cuisine: Contemporary Mexican / ingredient-driven

Address: Av. Mazatlán 190, Colonia Condesa, Cuauhtémoc, CDMX 06170, Mexico

Phone: +52 55 9107 8494

Dinner: Monday–Saturday, 6:00–10:00 pm

Lunch: Monday–Saturday, 2:00–4:30 pm

Price: MXN $500+ per person, à la carte

Website: Gaba Restaurante