Our Story

Growing up in Southern California, I was surrounded by Latin culture. It was a quintessential part of the very fabric Orange and L.A. County is cut from. I am cut from this cloth.

As a youth, I spent a lot of time in border towns, and all along the Baja California coast. Going on surf trips down to Rosarito or Sayulita always had me thinking I would leave after high school and figure out what it would take to enjoy that lifestyle. 

In my early 20s, I travelled extensively through Central America and found refuge in the Yucatán peninsula back when Tulum was still very cool. I would dream up ways in which I could move down there some day. My best friend and I would sublet our home in Ashland, Oregon, where I lived for eight years before moving to B.C. and actually make money while we travelled on a shoestring budget to “come back richer” as we called it, financially, culturally, and emotionally. 

I started an artist collective, while going to Southern Oregon University, which led to founding a music and arts festival called EMRG+N+SEE that seemed to the perfect way to support and highlight what all of my epicly talented friends were doing at that time. The festival outgrew, Ashland, where I was living at the time, and I moved it up to Portland, Oregon. This coincided with the crazy boom of the culinary world that was happening there. I had always been a foodie, but it is during these years a seed was planted that would later sprout Lunitas Mexican Eatery. 

I met my son‘s father at Burning Man in 2005. He had a business and music studio on the Sunshine coast, in BC, Canada. I was deeply fulfilled by the work I was doing and the business I was building. We were happy to travel back-and-forth for 2 1/2 years until one day, we found out we were going to have a baby. “Your place or mine?”, we would joke. I had fallen so deeply in love with the Sunshine Coast and all of my new friends here, that I decided working remotely, so close to Portland, Oregon, would be the perfect choice. 

For four years, I traveled back-and-forth for meetings, and would put on the festival each year until I decided it was time to actually start growing my roots here in Canada. This led to my absolute obsession with all things, food and beverage related. I went to school at Northwest Culinary Academy In Vancouver in 2015 and promptly started Amuse Supper Club, a seasonally inspired, fine dining, secret location supper club business. 

My husband and I split up that year, and I was considering moving back to California to be closer to my family and continue Amuse Supper Club down there. During this time of contemplation, a friend reached out, asking if I would be interested in creating the concept and menu for a restaurant she was thinking about opening in Lower Gibsons. When she told me it would be a Mexican restaurant, I almost turned it down because it seemed a vast departure to what I was doing at the time. I mean, after all, I was a “fine dining chef”. She would look at me like I was crazy and tell me that I was the one who would always talk about how desperately this place needed a Mexican restaurant. And it was true. The fact that there was zero Mexican places to eat at the time was always the weirdest part about living on the Coast for me. 

My fancy was tickled. After I created the food menu, she asked me if I wanted to be her 50/50 partner. So, with a complete life change from being a music festival owner, I became a restaurateur. Six months later, I bought her out and really got to know what that “restaurant life” was all about! 

I brought on a head chef, Brett Bratnal, around this time to help me manage the kitchen as i umbrella’ed all the facets of the business and will be forever grateful for our time together.

In 2022, I found our current head chef, Jonatan Isaac Valdez, living in Puebla, Mexico. He had attended gastronomy school and worked all over in Mexico before moving to France to further his culinary education and working in France. He then moved to. Dubai and helped a beautiful Mexican restaurant there. During the pandemic, he was forced to move back to Mexico and opened his own business there. After the closures he decided to close it down and had his eyes set to move to Canada or the US to further his culinary adventure. Once we connected, it was clear what a great fit this would be for Lunitas. It has been so incredible to pair my take on Mexican cuisine with his vast knowledge of traditional and experimental techniques of Latin food. 

Our cocktail program is where we really get to explore the seasonality of what is grown right here on the Sunshine Coast. With so many ingredients coming from so far away, we are endlessly inspired by exploring the myriad of ways we can work with local produce from both Sunshine Coast farmers and by foraging indigenous ingredients. We strive to create delicious nibbles and sips to be enjoyed while taking in views of Gibsons Harbor, wildlife, surrounding islands, and craggy snow capped mountains.