Francisco Lopez
Alma
Chef Francisco Lopez has spent more than twenty years in the kitchen at Alma, the beloved three-floor Mexican restaurant anchored in Brooklyn’s Columbia Waterfront District. In February 2024, he became co-owner — a transition that felt less like a career milestone than a natural next chapter for a man who had poured two decades into... READ MORE
Chef Francisco Lopez has spent more than twenty years in the kitchen at Alma, the beloved three-floor Mexican restaurant anchored in Brooklyn’s Columbia Waterfront District. In February 2024, he became co-owner — a transition that felt less like a career milestone than a natural next chapter for a man who had poured two decades into the restaurant’s soul. Originally from Puebla, Francisco draws on the chile-rich, deeply layered cooking of his home state, while his wife and kitchen partner Margarita — a native of Oaxaca — brings the earthy, smoke-tinged traditions of her region. Together, their culinary roots define Alma’s menu.
The restaurant’s signature moles — mole poblano, mole amarillo, and mole negro — are made entirely from scratch, using recipes the two have built and refined together over the years. For Francisco, the kitchen has never been just a workplace. It’s where he has spent the better part of his professional life, earning the trust of a room, a neighborhood, and eventually a stake in the restaurant itself. That journey — from cook to co-owner, over twenty years in the same building — is its own kind of story.
READ LESS