"Taste of the Border" premieres on tonight, Thursday, May 5, on streaming service Discovery+, starring Latina chef, San Diego native and MasterChef winner Claudia Sandoval. The first season of the show will feature Sandoval showcasing how food is prepared and served in various areas of the U.S.-Mexico border region, traveling from San Diego to South Padre Island, TX. Sandoval is the first Latina to host a food travel show on a major U.S. network or streaming platform.
Raised in San Diego's National City, Claudia Sandoval won season 6 of Fox's hit primetime home cook competition MasterChef, being awarded with $250,000 in prize money and a cookbook deal. Claudia was also Tajín International's official chef and recipe creator in the United States, as well as a head judge on MasterChef Latino, a hit cooking competition on Telemundo. In 2015, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors proclaimed December 15 to be "Claudia Sandoval Day" throughout the County Of San Diego. Last year, Sandoval partnered with ready-made meal company Home Bistro to create a co-branded line of traditional Mexican dishes.
In 2019, Claudia Sandoval launched a Kickstarter campaign seeking at least $50,000 (was originally $150,000) to assist her in the opening of El Cochi Dorado ("the golden pig"), a contemporary Mexican bakery, then expected to open in San Diego's South County community National City as early as June 2020. After raising $59,208 from over 500 backers, Claudia Sandoval announced in April 2020 that her dreams to open a modern panaderia had been crushed due to the fallout of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. Claudia never provided a full accounting for what happened to all the money raised via Kickstarter and there is no word whether a portion of the funds were returned to any of the 592 backers.
Check out the trailer below for a preview of Taste of the Border on Discovery+.
