By Yvonne S. Marquez
La Botánica, a vegan eatery and bar, is defying norms in the San Antonio restaurant scene. In a city that loves queso-filled Tex-Mex food and in a state that boasts damn good barbecue, La Botánica offers an alternative option with Mexican-inspired, plant-based food created by queer chef and co-owner, Rebel Mariposa. “I’m not trying to do the status quo,” Mariposa says. “I’m trying to shake things up in a good way, in a healthy way, and bring different food to my hometown.”
Mariposa is the creative force behind La Botánica’s impressive food menu. She has recreated and veganized a range of beloved Mexican recipes from ceviche, empanadas, and chalupas to Mariposa’s favorite item, “Nothin’ Fishy About These Fish Tacos”—sautéed oyster mushrooms topped with avocado, cabbage, and salsa verde on corn tortillas. Much of her inspiration, she says, comes from her Mexican heritage and her family’s cookbooks. “My inspiration is my culture and wanting to respect the food that is native to what is now called Texas and the influences that have come in pre-colonization and after colonization,” she says. “Creating food and serving food is an ode to my family and all my ancestors; it’s like an offering and an honoring for me.”
Mariposa is an artist at heart and is relatively new to the restaurant business. Her passion for creating dynamic vegan dishes began six years ago when she changed her diet for “political, environmental, and spiritual reasons.” Mariposa explains she became a vegan because the meat industry is violent towards animals and negatively impacts the environment. “I didn’t want to consume something that has suffered its whole life just so humans can have a steak on the table,” Mariposa says. “It was something I didn’t want to put in my own body and my own psyche.”
Once Mariposa adopted her new outlook, she began to veganize her family’s recipes. Her family and friends then started to ask her for help on how to eat more plant-based foods for health reasons. Mariposa saw there was a demand for healthier food options, so she decided to make vegan eats outside of her own kitchen, and began selling her food at events and pop-ups.
Mariposa was doing vegan pop-ups around the city when a friend approached her asking if she wanted to partner with them to open a new restaurant and bar. At first, Mariposa turned them down but, after some soul-searching, she changed her mind. “I thought, you know, it’s a chance to take and if I don’t do it, I might regret it,” she says. “The worst case scenario is that it won’t work out, but I’ll probably learn a lot from it.” Mariposa took the chance and has now owned La Botánica for two and a half years, along with her business partners Andrea Vince and Alan Codd.
La Botánica is open late nights, offering an array of specialty cocktails like the Mezclarita, a refreshing spin on a margarita with mezcal, triple sec, fresh squeezed orange juice, and sweet and sour. On most nights, La Botánica hosts a wide-variety of events that have included fundraisers for nonprofits, prom for LGBTQ youth, album release parties, queer punk poetry, Tejano music night, karaoke, and burlesque shows. Mariposa says she wants La Botánica to be an accepting and safe space for “queerdos and weirdos” to have fun or eat dinner. It’s also important for Mariposa to center queer artists at her burgeoning venue. “It is really important for me to elevate queer artists in town, especially women, queer women, Mexican and Tejana lesbians,” she says. “Texas is very conservative, so I really want to make sure that these artists have a space at Botánica to really be able to be themselves and feel comfortable.”
Mariposa says she gets some backlash for catering her restaurant to people of color and LGBTQ people. She says to be a queer person of color in the South is to be a rebel, just like her name. “It’s not easy to stand anywhere in the South as someone who is on that [LGBTQ] spectrum, especially the darker your skin is. It is a political statement. You can risk your life; you do risk your life.”
Mariposa says her deep familial roots in San Antonio are what gives her strength in the face of critics and naysayers. Her family has lived in the area for generations, including her indigenous, curandera great grandmother, who brewed beer during the Prohibition era. “We were farming these lands and creating meals well before other people came into what we now call San Antonio and Texas. I think there’s this ancestral knowledge and rite of passage for me that gives me the strength to hold down a business like this in Texas.”
The restaurant business can be brutal and Mariposa knows it can often take five years for a restaurant to really become a grounded business. Most restaurants don’t make it past the first six months, so she’s celebrating the fact that La Botánica is entering its third year and has high hopes for the future. Mariposa’s goals include eventually opening for lunch and then breakfast and expanding the venue’s capabilities to bring bigger names and acts to perform. “We can do something like Botánica and be successful, even if we center queer, brown and black people.”
For more information on La Botánica, visit vivalabotanica.com.
