GREENVILLE — Tania Cienfuegos Harris is reviewing the menu at Sachas Cafe even though she knows she’s going to order the same thing she usually does.
“And para me una de carnitas and stuffed but no onions,” Harris said, switching between Spanish and English.
The pastry chef at Topsoil Kitchen & Market and now a James Beard semifinalist nominee discovered Sachas Café on Pendleton Street on the edge of West Greenville just under four years ago.
She’s eaten here nearly once a week ever since.
As a result, the servers know her so well that Harris can almost communicate by gesture from across the room without even saying words.
At noon on this Monday, Harris is one of the few people in the restaurant, but within 30 minutes, the place is bustling.
Tania Cienfuegos Harris
Over chicharrons and empanaditos, she feels at home. It’s not that it is the same food she grew up with in Mexico City, but there is something about the feel of the people and the hominess of the flavors that comforts her.
And having lived away from Mexico, in the United States for 15 years now, Harris is always looking for a little bit of home.
Path to becoming a famed chef
She arrived in the U.S. in 2009, living and working in Texas on a J-1 student visa. The visa arrangement allowed her to pursue her culinary education studies by working and learning in various restaurants.
She didn’t think she’d stay in American, but she met a man and fell in love. He was from Greenville. While the relationship didn’t last, her love of Greenville did.
The chef has worked everywhere from Sidewall Pizza creating specialty ice creams to Restaurant 17 and to The Lazy Goat with Table 301.
In 2019, she was named a South Carolina Chef Ambassador .
She joined Topsoil in 2021, drawn to the restaurant by executive chef and co-owner Adam Cooke, who she’d worked with at Restaurant 17.
“He has been hands down the best chef,” Harris said.
What does a good chef mean?
“Maybe for you it’s a person that can cook their ass off,” she said. “Or for that person, it’s the person that can keep costs low. It’s very subjective. For me, a good chef has to have everything. Organization, leadership. A lot of chefs that can cook amazing are not good leaders.”
Harris has always found food inspiring. While her mother is also a great cook, it was Harris’ maternal grandmother that instilled a love of baking. And because her parents both had busy jobs — her father as a journalist and her mother as a paleontologist — Harris learned the ins and outs of the kitchen at her grandmother’s heels.
There she was, a little girl, engulfed in the specialness of sharing the love that passes from a heart to hands, to a dish.
To this day, though her desserts could be described as exquisite and complex, Harris still has a soft spot for a good marble cake with chocolate ganache icing.
“I love it.”
Amplifying Mexican cuisine and ingredients
While she loves baking cakes, Harris sees her job as pastry chef as an opportunity to push further the conversation of food and particularly Mexican food. She is a master of fusing savory and sweet, and weaving ingredients and techniques to create something new even as she is honoring the past.
Currently, she is working on flavors inspired by Tejate, a traditional Oaxacan cocoa and maize beverage. She has also played with puffed amaranth, a heritage grain that is rooted in Oaxacan culinary traditions.
While Harris always thinks about ordering something different, she almost always orders the Carnitas arepa from Sacha’s Cafe.
“We have so many Hispanic ingredients — when we use insects, people say it is weird, but why is it weird?” she said. “Because it is unknown. It is our job as chefs to show, in this case Hispanic ingredients, are not weird, they are not known.”
The food arrives and Harris is pleased. She takes a bit of a guacamole-dipped crispy chicharron, closes her eyes for a minute and smiles.
It is like home, she said.
Though Harris thought she might return to Mexico one day, she has grown to love her life in the U.S. and in Greenville. This past December, she officially become a U.S. citizen.
Thus, throw in a James Beard semifinalist nomination for outstanding pastry chef or baker, and it’s been quite an exciting few months. Harris is still processing the nomination. In some ways, it is an incredible boon to her decision to devote her life to the culinary world, and yet in others, it is a lot of pressure.
“With the nomination comes a big responsibility,” Harris said, taking a bite of her arepa. “You cannot be slacking around or serving a whatever dessert because you were lazy that day. Now, its push time, and I am not gonna fall on my laurels.”
Sachas Café has locations in Greenville at 598 Pendleton St. and 1001 N. Pleasantburg Dr.
For more, visit https://sachascafe.com.
