The Puerto Rican Chef Bringing Restaurant Flavor Home

Most of the sauces you buy at the grocery store were developed by food scientists. A few were developed by chefs. Almost none were developed by a Puerto Rican chef who trained at Lima's most celebrated restaurants and came home to open the first Nikkei kitchen on the island.

That's the short version of the Made By Cooks story. The longer version is that Chef Rafael Ubior Serrati built a career in twenty years of kitchens — catering, food trucks, fine dining, stages in Peru — before he bottled anything. The Sesame & Ginger sauce you can now keep on your counter is a distillation of what he serves to guests at SUR Barra Nikkei, the Santurce restaurant that put Nikkei cuisine on Puerto Rico's map.

When we decided to stock Made By Cooks, it wasn't because we needed an Asian sauce in a Puerto Rican pantry. It was because this was the one Asian-inspired sauce built by a chef we respected, grounded in a tradition we understood, produced with the care we look for in everything we carry. This post is the full story of who's behind the jar.

Who Is Chef Rafael Ubior?

Rafael Ubior grew up in Puerto Rico in a modest home — no culinary pedigree, no restaurant-family connections. What he did have, as a kid, was the Food Network. Watching other people cook on television sparked something. After graduating from the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez with a background in administration and marketing, his first job out of school was in a kitchen.

That was 2008. From that point forward, his life's direction was set: cook, and eventually build something of his own.

What's unusual about Ubior isn't the trajectory — plenty of cooks start as assistants and work their way up. What's unusual is that he did it without formal culinary training. He's a self-taught chef who learned the hard way: in catering kitchens, on opening teams, eventually running his own food truck and catering company before he was thirty.

From the Food Network to Lima's Top Kitchens

The career arc runs through a short list of Puerto Rico's most respected restaurants. He started as an assistant cook at a catering company. Moved on to Restaurante Antonio, one of the island's iconic banquet restaurants. Joined the opening team at Santaella in Santurce — still one of San Juan's most acclaimed kitchens.

In 2013 he launched High Kitchen, a catering and food truck venture that gave him his first taste of running an operation end-to-end. Marketing, inventory, line cooking, managing a team — he ran all of it. It was also where he started refining the philosophy that would eventually show up in his sauces: that great food should be reproducible, honest, and not precious.

Then came the pivot that defined his cuisine. In 2017, Ubior moved to Lima, Perú, and spent time staging — the unpaid apprenticeship every serious chef eventually takes — at two of Peru's most celebrated restaurants: Astrid & Gastón, the Gastón Acurio flagship widely considered one of South America's best restaurants, and El Mercado, the Rafael Osterling-led seafood temple in Lima's Miraflores district.

Lima is the global capital of Nikkei cuisine — the fusion of Japanese and Peruvian cooking that dates back to the late-1800s arrival of Japanese immigrants in Peru. For a chef from a Caribbean island with its own deep fusion history, the resonances were obvious. Japanese precision. Peruvian citrus and aji. Puerto Rican ingredients and soul. The framework clicked.

SUR Barra Nikkei — Puerto Rico's First Nikkei Restaurant

When Ubior returned to Puerto Rico in 2019, he opened SUR Barra Nikkei in Santurce, San Juan — the first Nikkei restaurant on the island. The timing was bold. The concept was unfamiliar to most Puerto Ricans. And the menu was built around the specific collision Ubior had been working out in his head for years: Japanese-Peruvian tradition, reinterpreted with Puerto Rican ingredients and sensibility.

The restaurant succeeded. It's since become one of San Juan's most talked-about kitchens — a destination for visiting chefs, a staple on "best-of" lists, and the place Ubior has used to continue evolving his philosophy in real time.

His approach there, and in the sauces that followed, is consistent: tradition, balance, and evolution. Respect what the source cuisine does well. Don't cheapen it with shortcuts. Then find what genuinely belongs from your own kitchen, and let it in.

That philosophy is why a sesame-ginger sauce made by a Puerto Rican chef in Florida ends up tasting better than most of the big-brand versions in American grocery stores. It's not about fusion for the sake of novelty. It's about a chef who understands the source material well enough to build it honestly.

What Made By Cooks Actually Is

Made By Cooks is Ubior's consumer-product line — but it's more than just his own sauces. He built it as a cooperative of Puerto Rican chefs, a shared platform for restaurant cooks on the island to develop retail products that bring their kitchens home. The idea is that the same sauce you'd be served at SUR Barra Nikkei can end up on a weeknight dinner in New Jersey, without compromise.

The practical setup: the recipes are developed in Puerto Rico by working chefs. The sauces are then produced in Florida, which allows for proper shelf-stable manufacturing, USDA-compliant food safety, and reliable nationwide distribution — things that are much harder to scale from a commercial kitchen in San Juan. The label reads Product of Puerto Rico (Made in Florida). That's accurate, and worth knowing.

The first product line is the one we carry: Ubior's signature Sesame & Ginger sauce, and its spicier habanero-laced sibling.

Start here

Sesame & Ginger Duo — Chef Rafael Ubior

Both signature sauces in one set — Original for marinades and dressings, Spicy (with habanero) for grilled proteins and noodle bowls. The easiest way to understand what Made By Cooks is actually about.

Shop the Duo — $22 Just the Original — $12

The Sesame & Ginger Sauces — Original and Spicy

The sauces themselves are worth describing in detail. Both come in 8-oz glass bottles, are shelf-stable until opened, and refrigerate cleanly after first use.

Sesame & Ginger (Original). A balanced, aromatic sauce built on fresh ginger warmth and toasted sesame depth. Lightly sweet, lightly salty, with enough body to coat a noodle or a grilled shrimp without being heavy. Works as a marinade, a dressing, a stir-fry finisher, or a dipping sauce. It's the version most people reach for first, and it's the one we keep in the fridge year-round.

Spicy Sesame & Ginger. Same base, with habanero. Habanero — not sriracha, not chili oil. That matters. Habanero gives the sauce a clean, forward heat with fruity notes, not the one-dimensional burn of a mass-market spicy sauce. It's a chef's spice choice, not a food-scientist's. Use it on grilled chicken, tossed into noodle bowls, or brushed on salmon before broiling.

Both bottles work across the Made By Cooks promise: restaurant-grade flavor, reproducible at home, without the sodium bombs or additive lists you find in the supermarket-shelf equivalents.

Why We Stock It

Hedman Soto is a Puerto Rican pantry brand. When we decided to carry an Asian-inspired sauce line, it had to pass a few filters:

1. A chef behind it, not a brand. Too much of the "chef-branded" category is a licensing deal and a glossy label. Made By Cooks was built by Ubior, still cooks under him, and carries his name in a real way.

2. Puerto Rican roots. We're a PR pantry store. We want to support Puerto Rican makers. Ubior's restaurant is in Santurce. His chef collective is local. The story is ours.

3. Honest ingredients. We looked at the label. Real ingredients, no mystery additives, no MSG, no artificial colors. A sauce you can read before you buy.

4. Versatility. A single sauce that can marinate chicken, dress a salad, finish a stir-fry, or become a dipping bowl is a different kind of pantry staple. It earns its shelf space.

5. It tastes like what it's supposed to. This one is the real filter. We taste everything we stock. The Sesame & Ginger sauce tastes like the best version of itself — not a watered-down approximation, not an over-salted compromise. The first time we tried it, the decision to carry it was obvious.

The full lineup

Shop Made By Cooks at Hedman Soto

Sesame & Ginger Original ($12), Spicy with Habanero ($12), or the Duo set ($22 — save $2). Restaurant-grade flavor, shipped to your door.

Shop the Collection Duo Bundle — $22

Frequently Asked Questions

About the author Hedman Soto Born in Puerto Rico, Hedman grew up learning to cook from his mother and bake from his father. He founded Hedman Soto to curate the pantry, tools, and traditions of criollo cooking for kitchens across the US — stocking only products he actually cooks with at home, from makers he trusts.