An award-winning author, culinary historian, chef and restaurateur, Dr. Maricel E. Presilla is widely recognized as an expert on Latin American cuisines, cacao, and fine chocolate. She combines the high academic standards of a professional historian with a cultural anthropologist’s focus on rigorous field work.

Dr. Presilla has pursued major research in agriculture with emphasis on a number of tropical crops. In 2013, her magnum opus, Gran Cocina Latina: The Food of Latin America, was honored as Cookbook of the Year by the James Beard Foundation and Best General Cookbook by the International Association of Culinary Professionals. She has also authored an illustrated series on the indigenous cultures and cuisines of Latin America for Henry Holt, and a recent encyclopedic horticultural and culinary compendium on an iconic Latin American staple, Peppers of the Americas: The Remarkable Capsicums that Forever Changed Flavor (Lorena Jones Books/Ten Speed Press), the winner of the 2018 reference and technical category award of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, the largest organization of culinary professionals in the world. She has also contributed entries on chocolate for the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America and articles on the pre-Colombian history of chocolate in the Americas and single-origin chocolate for the massive encyclopedia, The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets. She is also interested in gender issues and has written about Maya women in cacao and artisanal chocolate making in rural Guatemala for the Miami Herald and the Turkish anthropological journal Yemek ve Kültür (Food and Culture).  

As chef, Maricel Presilla was named the James Beard Foundation’s Best Chef-Mid Atlantic region in 2012 for her work at her restaurant Cucharamama (she is the first Latin American woman chef to win this honor in the entire region) and was inducted into the prestigious James Beard Foundation cadre of outstanding US food professionals, a Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America in 2015.  Among her important recognitions, Dr. Presilla was the first Latin American female chef to have been invited to cook an entire Latin American menu at the White House for Hispanic Heritage Month Fiesta Latina in 2009. 

A descendant of cacao farmers from the eastern mountains of her native Cuba, Dr. Presilla has been working on fine cacao and chocolate for the last thirty years. In the 1980’s, when Dr. Presilla was deeply involved in the revival of Venezuelan chocolate and cacao, she created Gran Cacao Company as an umbrella for heirloom cacao bean trade and farm revitalization. Since then, she has expanded Gran Cacao’s mission to provide innovative approaches to fine cacao and chocolate and the foods of Latin America. She is currently involved in projects focusing on cacao within sustainable agricultural systems in Latin America, particularly in Costa Rica, and integrating several disciplines such as agroecology, ethnogastronomy/gastrobotany, and most importantly education. 

She continues to educate, support, and energize cacao farmers and small chocolate makers in Latin America and around the world through her company Gran Cacao Americas and her platform as a founder and Americas Director of the International Chocolate Awards, the largest independent fine chocolate competition in the world, and the International Institute of Chocolate and Cacao Tasting. Her seminal book The New Taste of Chocolate: A Cultural and Natural History of Cacao with Recipes (Ten Speed Press) in its 2000 and revised and expanded 2009 editions inspired countless chocolate lovers, makers, and farmers to look deeper into fine cacao from Latin America. This was the first book of its kind to visually present a thorough overview of cacao varieties and their individual flavor profiles from a first-hand perspective and within a serious historical framework with chocolate recipes calling for specific origins and percentages instead of using generic terms like bittersweet or bitter that mean little to cooks.

Judging over 3000 chocolate entries organized in close to thirty categories annually, has allowed Dr. Presilla to refine her tasting skills and add to her unique understanding of chocolate styles, changing trends and marketing opportunities around the world. 

 Dr. Presilla is a board member of the Fine Chocolate Industry Association (FCIA) actively engaged in the organization’s educational programming, the Smithsonian Museum of American History Kitchen Cabinet, a member of the Culinary Institute of America’s African Cuisines Advisory Council, a consultant for the New York Botanical Garden’s Afro-American Garden in 2022 -23, and a council member for the Neom x Care’s Awards in sustainable agriculture and gastronomy.