Rawmona’s Kitchen

Karla Diaz-Cano moved to Bend about eight years ago and says it’s been a challenge. She grew up in Mexico City and has lived in the U.S. for 20 years in large cities with a lot of diversity. “Coming to Bend was a little culture shock for me,” Diaz-Cano says. Each winter, she returns to Mexico to reconnect with her culture and family.

Diaz-Cano took her first cooking class at age eight and sold cookies in front of her home. She is a familiar face at the Bend, Sisters and Northwest Crossing farmers markets, selling tamales from her food stand named Rawmona’s. She didn’t expect to open a physical location, but while looking for a commissary kitchen, Diaz-Cano found a small kitchen next to Lone Pine Coffee on Harriman Street she could call her own. It’s a tiny space, one Diaz-Cano felt was manageable. Customers remain outside, purchasing food through a half-door kitchen window, and yellow tables and chairs on the sidewalk are offered as seating, although most people place orders to go.

Her menu, written in pastel colors, features five flavors of tamales including chicken-mole, chicken-salsa, beef with veggies, green peppers-corn and plantain with beans. Customers can have them made to eat immediately or purchase frozen to heat at home. She also sells paletas, the Mexican version of a popsicle and a variety of baked goods inspired from her childhood. All of the ingredients are organic and gluten free. Most items are dairy free with no refined sugar. Diaz-Cano spends time reading about the history of ingredients, some of which date back to the Mayans and Aztecs who used them in ceremonial settings.

“I believe nature provides us with everything we need, but we have become so disconnected from that because of the way that our cities are built and our society is built.” She goes on to say, “What I feel really good about in terms of the products that we make is they’re all whole foods. We don’t use anything that’s refined. We make our own white chocolate because all the white chocolate that’s out there is either made with cane sugar or stevia, and the stevia that they put in there most likely is not the pure stevia.”

Rawmona’s also sells jars or bags of cacao, salsa, picapeanuts, picafresa and chamoy, which is a condiment that Diaz-Cano creates from hibiscus and apricots, making it a spicy-sweet sensation. In the colder months, she’ll offer Mexican cacao with homemade marshmallows and holiday cookie boxes.

Diaz-Cano is also an artist. Her first business is a wholesale greeting card/sticker line featuring the character Rawmona. While her current venture is with Rawmona’s Kitchen, she’s already planning her third business which will be leading trips to Oaxaca. She wants to take a small group of eight to ten travelers in early 2026 and immerse them in culture where they’ll learn how to make tortillas from scratch, traditional chocolate, pottery and possibly plant dying.

“Oaxaca is beautiful. The people are incredible. The food is incredible, the markets, the art, everything about the city is beautiful. Everything is so magical… I’m super excited about it, because it feels like a very natural bridge.” Diaz-Cano explains. “I don’t want to get into the political thing, but there’s a lot of tension and a lot of misconceptions and judgements. There’s so much magic in Mexico, especially Oaxaca. So much depth… I feel like part of my path in this lifetime is to highlight that and share that with people and just be a bridge to that so people can also see and experience that.”

Right now, she’s doing that through food. Rawmona’s Kitchen is currently open Thursdays and Fridays, but Diaz-Cano plans to add Saturdays in early September and possibly expand to five days a week.

She says in Mexico, food and spirituality are deeply intertwined. All of the food she crafts is intended to honor her roots and all the people who walked before her and cared for the earth.
“If we recreate and reconnect to nature, so many of our problems these days would literally go away. They wouldn’t be there. So that’s the deeper intention behind all this.”