Eva Longoria and I are speaking over Zoom because she needs her hands free. “I’m making meatballs,” she explains. “I love making them with homemade pasta.” While it sounds delicious, it’s not even one of her signature dishes. “The most requested is my tortilla soup and my husband’s favorite is my chicken tacos.”
Born in Corpus Christi, Texas, about 150 miles from the Mexican border, Longoria, 49, grew up on the fresh, authentic tastes and aromas of Tex-Mex cooking. “It was my whole childhood: Tex-Mex, barbecue and vegetables we grew on our ranch. Every holiday had its own special highlight, like at Christmas, we’d make tamales. For Easter, it was this amazing potato salad. At weddings, it was cookies called pan de polvo. At Thanksgiving, it was homemade cranberry sauce. And, of course, a lot of barbecue and brisket. Being raised with an appreciation of cuisine was definitely a gift.”
It’s one she’s instilling in her 6-year-old son, Santiago, who’s also in the kitchen. “He’s a great eater,” she tells me. “There’s no, ‘How do I introduce this?’ You just do it. You introduce them to as many different foods as early as possible and I try to make him part of the process. So, if he’s here helping Mommy make the meatballs, he’s going to be more likely to eat them because there’s pride in it. He’s not a chicken nugget and hot dog kid. He likes a complete meal. He eats salmon with broccolini.”
Longoria, too, has been expanding her palate and her cultural understanding of different foods through her CNN series “Searching for Mexico,” where she visited lesser-known parts of the country to explore their regional specialties and inspirations. “What really excited me about Mexico was all the endemic ingredients: chocolate, vanilla, tomato, chilis, avocados — things from Mexico that have influenced the entire world.”
Casa Del Sol top brass: Mariana Padilla, Carmen González, Eva Longoria and Alejandra Pelayo
Photo By Brian Bowen Smith
Having relocated to Marbella, Spain, with her husband José Bastón and Santiago, Longoria is in her culinary element. “Gastronomically, Spain is so in fashion right now,” she notes. “Some of the best restaurants in the world are from Barcelona, Madrid and Catalonia. The No. 1 chef in the world is from Madrid. It’s so cool to be in the place where it’s all happening. And it’s recent. It’s really taken off in the last 10 years. The entire country has just elevated.”
She’s taking viewers on her discovery journey in the show’s second installment, “Searching for Spain.” “We just wrapped Galicia, which I had never been to, and, ‘Oh my god!’ So, I’m excited to keep going to places I’ve never been and learn about ingredients.”
In addition to the series and her second cookbook, “My Mexican Kitchen: 100 Recipes Rich with Tradition,” published earlier this year, Longoria has made a name for herself in the spirits world as a co-founder of Casa Del Sol tequila.
She had been offered tequila endorsements for years, Longoria explains, but none felt right until she was approached by Casa Del Sol. “I didn’t want just to put my name on something, I don’t like doing that. I want to be involved and help run the business.”
“I got really into tequila during COVID-19,” she continues. “There’s only so much wine you could drink during those two years, so I started having fun with different cocktails. What I loved about tequila, good tequila, was that it didn’t give me a hangover. I like a clean cocktail with simple ingredients. So when Casa Del Sol sent it to me, I tasted it and thought it was a game changer. We age it in cognac barrels, which is a disruptor in the industry, and gives it an amazing finish.”
Photo By Brian Bowen Smith
Equally disruptive is its nearly all-female leadership team. “We’re not a tequila [marketed solely] for women, but we have women in key positions, including our master distiller. It’s a male-dominated industry and it’s a nice thing to have more female representation in this category.”
Proving again she’s hands-on when it comes to business ventures, Longoria has also taken on a role as an investor and strategic advisor of Siete Family Foods, a popular Mexican-American vegan snack food brand co-founded by siblings Veronica and Miguel Garza. Long before meeting them, Longoria was a consumer of the brand. “I’ve always been a fan and every time I would give them [their products] to someone, they’d be like, ‘Oh those almond flour tortillas saved my life.’”
“[The Garzas] are Mexican-Americans, they’re Tex-icans like me. We grew up in very similar situations, the same Tex-Mex culture. We’re just so aligned as human beings. And I was like, ‘Please let me shine my light on your company because I love what you do, I love how you do it and I want to help you grow.’ I mean, they were already growing so fast on their own, but if I can add even an ounce of muscle behind the scenes, then I was like, ‘Please, please allow me to help,’” Longoria says.
She’s committed to bolstering Mexican and Latino-brand ownership of their own products. “I’m very purposeful about it because I know how hard it can be and how many barriers we have in the business world, whether it’s access to capital or training. So when you see Latino-owned companies of Latino products, that makes sense to me because of the authenticity, and authenticity is my North Star.”
It also drives her philanthropy, including the Eva Longoria Foundation, whose mission is to give the Latino community access to better education and the resources for stronger economic growth. “I know this community because I’m from this community. I really wanted to make sustainable change, so the foundation focuses on economic mobility and finding our worth in this culture. I’ve done studies, I’ve funded studies, so the changes we’re making are highly trackable.” Earlier this year, Longoria was awarded a $50 million grant and the Courage of Civility honor by Jeff Bezos, which she used to endow an expansion of the foundation’s work.
As devoted as she is to philanthropy, the breakout star of the long-running TV series “Desperate Housewives” is still very much tapped into Hollywood. In 2023, she directed “Flamin' Hot,” a tale inspired by the creation of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. “I like having more control of the final product, so I’m continuing to do that, to direct and produce.”
For now, she’s delighted to savor her new home base’s pure, unprocessed food offerings. “There’s such a difference here in Spain,” she marvels. “There’s no preservatives. When I got here I remember buying, like, 10 bananas. I was stocking up for the week and everything went bad almost the next day. And I thought, ‘Well, that sucks.’ But I realized, no, it’s good. You’re supposed to shop daily. You buy something to eat it. The pantries are small here because everything’s fresh and meant to be eaten right away. And that’s something I really love about it.”
Eva Longoria in an episode of her CNN series 'Searching For Mexico'
Photo Courtesy Of CNN