“The fun thing about Baja is we get to take all of the flavors and traditions of Mexico and play with them. There are no rules here because we aren’t as bound to traditions,” said Ibarra. Baja is an eight hundred-mile-long peninsula that hangs off California and Arizona, separated from mainland Mexico by the Sea of Cortés, and its geography has a lot to do with its distinction and isolation from the rest of Mexico. Many border kids grow up immersed in English television and radio, some are enrolled in U.S. schools, and in many other ways are culturally closer to the U.S. than to the rest of Mexico.

As for its cuisine, the northern half of the peninsula is not like other states in Mexico where centuries-old food traditions have been preserved by generations of mostly indigenous cooks (Oaxaca for instance). The indigenous populations here were mostly nomadic, seasonally following the best ingredients from abalone and seaweed on the Pacific coast to acorns and prickly pears in the sierras and deserts. This style of seasonal eating is still fundamental to modern Baja cuisine.

Culinary Art School sits off the Tijuana River, which as it makes its way to San Diego passes la linea, the world’s busiest land border, where street vendors hustle churros to waiting cars and shoulder giant statues of the Virgin de Guadalupe like devotees on a pilgrimage. South of it is an area that has historically absorbed migrants from all over the country and the world. Sonorans and Sinaloans who made carne asada and tacos de marlin icons of Tijuana’s street corners. Chinese communities whose influence can be found in the tiradito covered in soy sauce. The Japanese fishermen’s tempura techniques that melded with a Mexican frying instrument to birth Ensenada’s signature fish taco. The czar-fleeing Russians who revived the mission’s failed wineries in the Valle de Guadalupe.

Baja Med, a term that ages out as this Mexican food region shakes off the need for a Eurocentric suffix, points to the combination of Mexican cooking with Asian influences, as well as the area’s abundance of Mediterranean-like ingredients. In the early 2000s chefs like Miguel Ángel Guerrero, Javier Plascencia, Jair Tellez and Benito Molino used this label to vocalize a new style of ingredient-centric Baja cuisine coming from their kitchens in Tijuana, Ensenada and the Valle de Guadalupe.