This is the 125th article in Bears Doing Big Things, a weekly column celebrating the stories of notable M-A alumni.
Marianne Despres ’94 transformed her love for cooking and baking into her own restaurant, El Sur, in downtown Redwood City, where she shares her Argentine culture with the Bay Area.
Despres grew up in Menlo Park and attended Oak Knoll Elementary, Hillview Middle School, and then M-A. “I have very fond memories of Menlo Park. It was a lot different back then than it is now. We rode our bikes everywhere. It was less crowded. We had a lot of cool spots that we went to,” she said. Despres also spent significant time in Argentina, reflecting her family’s roots in South America, as both of her parents were raised there.
Throughout her childhood in Menlo Park, Despres participated in gymnastics and sewing, but she always especially enjoyed cooking. “I always love to cook. My mom is an amazing cook, and so we always cooked a lot together,” she said. “I grew up eating [empanadas] and making them with my family, my mom, my aunt, my grandmas.”
Despres cherished her experience at M-A, recalling her years as being filled with meaningful friendships and inspiring teachers. She was also a part of the Pom Pom Squad, a spirited dance and cheer team, during her freshman and sophomore years, and traveled to football games to perform. “I’m still really close with a lot of my high school friends, which is great,” Despres said. “It’s just nice, knowing people for that long is super special.”
Her French teacher at M-A, Sonja Seaberg, sparked her interest in Paris, which eventually led her to study there. “I went to Paris for the first time when I was 13, and I fell in love with the city, and she had that same love for it that I did, so we just totally bonded,” Despres said.
After M-A, Despres attended the University of the Pacific in Oregon, where she studied foreign affairs. She had always been interested in diplomacy, inspired by her Argentine roots and desire to work internationally.
However, after college, Despres changed her career path and decided to become a food writer. “I wanted to move to New York and work for Gourmet magazine, but I wanted to get some practical experience first,” she said. While Despres previously worked in corporate, fashion, advertising, and diplomacy, none of these fields fulfilled her. Instead, they ultimately steered her towards the arts, where she reconnected with her childhood passion for the culinary world.
This enthusiasm led her to attend Le Cordon Bleu Paris in Paris, where she studied both Culinary and Pastry. It was here that Despres first found interest in becoming a chef. “I really fell in love with being in the kitchen, and liked learning from the chefs and hearing their stories,” she said.
After culinary school, Despres decided to pursue a career as a chef, spending the next few years working in restaurants to gain experience. “I worked at a really big, very high-end catering company where there were 100 cooks in the kitchen, and I was one of two women,” Despres explained. “You had to be really focused on your job and make sure not to mess anything up.”
Her experience at the three-Michelin-star restaurant, The French Laundry in Napa, was also extremely impactful. “It was a very intense environment, and you just learn discipline, how to stay on your toes, how to work under pressure, how hard it is to create a really nice dish,” Despres said.
“It really made me appreciate now when I go out to eat, even if it’s not a fancy restaurant, but any place, I really have a ton of respect for all the people that work in any kind of restaurant hospitality setting,” she said.
After years of studying and working, Despres, inspired by her parents, decided she wanted to start her own restaurant. “My parents were both entrepreneurs, and just having kind of independence and freedom, where all the decisions you make are really important,” she said. “I also really loved the creative aspect of cooking and sharing my culture.” A few years later, after returning to the Bay Area and starting a family, Despres’ dream of becoming a restaurant owner came true when she opened El Sur.
Despres chose to center her restaurant around empanadas because of her fond memories of growing up and making them with her mother and grandmothers. “In Argentina, they have beautiful ranches called estancias, and you go there, and you sit around a fire, there’s always empanadas, and [you] just eat them in that setting where everyone is just coming together,” she said.
One of her proudest moments is keeping her business up and running throughout the challenging times of COVID-19. Despres had many excess empanadas and didn’t know what to do with them, so she decided to freeze them and sell them online. “So many people sent me notes and emails just saying, ‘You saved our dinner,’” she said. “People were so happy to have something, because everyone was stuck at home. That made me so proud and happy that not only are we making this great product, people were really appreciative of it at a critical time.”
“I love that I am able to share a product that I love with people in the community that I grew up in,” Despres added.
Despres’ advice to current M-A students: “Figure out what you’re good at, and work really, really hard, stay focused and stay disciplined. Nothing is easy, but things that are hard are very rewarding, so just work hard and be disciplined.”
To those interested in being a chef or owning a restaurant: “Get a job in any restaurant. It doesn’t matter if you’re washing dishes or taking out the trash, but just being in that environment, I think a lot of people think they like to cook, but it’s very different, liking to cook and then doing it for a living. So the number one way to figure that out is to actually work in a place, and you can be 16 years old, and work somewhere.”
