Our stories
When we started Cool Chile in 1993 the idea was simple: to start importing a wide variety of the best dried chillies,
direct from México, and to provide the UK with a whole new range of flavours and heat sensations for real Mexican and home cooking.
We began small, importing a handful of chilli varieties and selling them from our market stall, first in Portobello and then
in Borough. Whilst travelling in México, we researched (ate), tested (ate), tasted (ate) and when we got home began to produce our own salsas, sauces and pastes, faithfully using traditional Mexican recipes and our delicious imported chillies.
In 2005 we imported what was at the time, the UK's only tortilla machine (which we named Lupita) and began making
our own corn tortillas. After 3 years faithful service, Lupita couldn't keep up with increasing demand and was replaced
by El Monstruo, which we run 5 days a week producing 3500 fresh corn tortillas an hour.
Our tortillas are preservative and gluten free.
We're still a small company, same goal we've always had, only now we have a fantastic team of people helping us:
Dodie Miller, founder, director and guardian of all things chilli.
Lulu Herzog hand-makes many of our delicious pastes and sauces. She also runs the dispatch section.
Maigualida Bruzual Quevedo is in charge of packing and meticulously prepares all of our restaurant
and individual customer orders.
Maria Skinner is our food technologist, she is in charge of HACCPS, shelf life and tortilla tasting.
Hersi and Brian keep 'El Monstruo' running. They are in very early to make our daily orders of corn tortillas.
Osman helps make tortillas and is also the driver of the Cool Chile Co 'Tortilla-Mobile' (delivery van).
We are also very lucky to have Ailin who runs the Borough Market stall every Thursday, Friday and Saturday.