Hi, I’m Ruben Ocasio — most people who know my food just call me Chef Ruben. Flirty Foods is my kitchen, opened up to the world.
I grew up in the Bronx, and the best food I’ve ever eaten in my life came from my Puerto Rican grandmother on my father’s side. She cooked the way grandmothers from the island cook — by feel, by smell, by memory — and her kitchen is the reason I fell in love with food. I miss her very much. A lot of what I make today is me chasing a flavor she got right the first time, every time.
From there, food just kept showing up in my life. I spent years around Italian friends, so Italian food became second nature. Mexican family members fed me dishes I still try to recreate. And then I married into a Filipino family. My wife cooks for me beautifully, and her late father was a chef — he left behind a stack of handwritten index cards full of recipes. I’ve been digitizing those cards, mixing them in with my own favorites, and that’s a big part of what you’ll find here.
Because you can flirt with food. A great meal is playful, a little daring, full of personality. That’s the energy I want every recipe on this site to have.
Outside the kitchen I’m a certified systems and software engineer. Flirty Foods is one of three sites I built and run — the others are LaunchCareer.ai and VisitHRVA.com. All three are projects of The Ocasio Group, LLC.
When I’m not cooking or coding, I’m gaming. My favorite kitchen tool is the blender (cocktails are a hobby of their own), and the dish I will never get tired of making is arroz con pollo.
Everyone. Seriously. If you cook for one or for twenty, if you grew up with a grandmother’s recipes or you’re trying your first dish from another culture — you belong here. That’s the whole point.
Got a question, a recipe request, or did you cook something from the site and want to tell me how it went? I read every message.