Provecho owner Jill Anderson Bigelow might be the smartie pants that someday endows the UCLA campus with its first gourmet restaurant, she writes in UCLA Magazine, after joking that she wins all arguments with her chef/husband Gabriel Morales. Bigelow studied eating and drinking, among other things, as a UCLA co-ed gone abroad in Spain and Italy. Returning to campus and noting the lack of decent eats, she “spent over 100 hours writing a business plan in the Anderson library and presented it to the director of capital programs. He liked it, but told me to get some experience or a partner.” Bigelow has done both at Provecho, where hubby Morales backs the modern Mexican food movement, serving coffee mole foie gras and chorizo-stuffed pumpkin quail in Downtown. As for the future, Bigelow gives hungry Bruins a taste of hope, “I still haven’t made it back to campus with my original idea, but maybe after we prove ourselves downtown, I’ll knock on their door again.”
An Appetite for Excellence [UCLA Magazine]
