#154 | Fabiola Chipoco - The Dancing Adventurer who created Tita's Kitchen in Portland

Becoming Human

Fabiola Chipoco is an entrepreneur and chef at Tita’s Kitchen, a peruvian food truck at The Portland Mercado. Fabiola and her sister Fabiana Chipoco are the heart and soul behind Tita’s Kitchen. The Chipoco sisters were born in Peru. They showcase their culture and love of communing with others through their peruvian fare. Fabiola named her restaurant after her childhood nickname, Tita. When her sister Fabiana was a kid, she couldn’t say “Hermanita” (Lil sister in Spanish) so she would say, “Tita,” and sooner than later the whole family started calling Fabiola Tita! Especially the younger cousins. Tita’s kitchen uses food to connect culturally and communally with everyone who stops by for a meal or a moment.

In this episode Fabiola talks about how her mom raised her and her sister as a single parent after Fabiola’s father passed away. Her father was a businessman in a major city in Peru. He passed away when Fabiola was 3.5 years old. Fabiola admires her mother’s way of coping with being a single parent and the principles she’s passed down to Fabiola and her sister. Fabiola rose through the ranks in her marketing career in Peru. She practiced dance passionately as a hobby. She would form her first company as an advertising agent and she began stoking her entrepreneurial spirit. As her momentum in her advertising career crescendoed, she realized the role didn’t fit her as she expected so she dropped it all and went to travel by herself abroad. She turned her dance from a hobby into a career and then walked away from that level of commitment for dancing to travel even more.

We discuss her host of experiences that led up to her settling in Portland to once again pick up the entrepreneurial reins but in a way that is an extension of her personality, principles, and love. Swinging like a pendulum, gathering experiential data, honing in on her personal middle way. Now Fabiola works in her food truck cooking with her sister and friends while in a partnership with another Portland entrepreneur Stephan Strauch of Chakraw Coffee. Checkout the episode Stephan and I did here.