Local restaurateur Isabel Cruz is once again waking up the local culinary scene with the reopening of The Coffee Cup in La Jolla and a newly released cookbook that includes many of the lauded dishes you’ll find at her Zen-like restaurant in Pacific Beach, Isabel’s Cantina.

Cruz reigns among San Diego’s tireless cache of chefs who have helped plant our city on the radar of celebrities and national food media – a recent phenomenon that local restaurant operators and foodies alike have long dreamed about.

Since opening The Coffee Cup in 1998, which temporarily closed due to a kitchen fire, and then introducing Cantina a few years later, Cruz has demonstrated her cooking magic for whipping up healthy Latin-Asian cuisine on ABC’s Good Morning America and a host of other network television talk shows. Additionally, her restaurants have attracted the likes of California First Lady Maria Shriver, self-empowerment guru Deepak Chopra and House of Blues co-founder Isaac Tigrett, to name a few.

Yet it is Cruz’s hot-off-the-press cookbook that gives novice cooks a stimulating and firsthand taste of her roots, having grown up in a Puerto Rican family in a Los Angeles neighborhood that saw the comings and goings of Asian, Cuban and South American immigrants contributing to home potlucks.

In her 200-plus-page Isabel’s Cantina: Bold Latin Flavors from the New California Kitchen (Clarkson Potter/Random House), the cooking diva spells out deceptively simple recipes incorporating such prominent flavor ingredients as ginger, chiles, mint, limes, cilantro and mangoes. Mahi mahi, for instance, moves into a new flavor genre with jalapeno and ponzu sauce; cumin-and panko-crusted chicken ruptures the ol’ Shake ‘n Bake mold; and healthy main-course soups using olive oil, broth or flour instead of cream help readers gear up for the coming winter season.

Cruz teaches us how to maximize the flavors of food by layering marinades and sauces into individual dishes. In the case of salmon, for example, she suggests first drizzling the fish with her recipe for gingery “soy joy sauce” before topping it off with an easy-to-make papaya and mango salsa with mint. The sauce and salsa chapter carries high value, as it puts new cooking staples into our refrigerators for adorning meats, fish, sandwiches, salads, you name it.

Breakfast items are not excluded. Those who have gleefully consumed morning meals at The Coffee Cup or Cantina are finally given the secrets to making Cruz’s famous coconut French toast, dragon potatoes and the highly acclaimed Nirvana, an ultra healthy breakfast comprised of sesame grilled tofu, egg whites, veggies, brown rice and fresh salsa cruda.

From appetizers unique to most cocktail parties, and lively, innovative salads, to chipotle-kissed main courses and fruit-infused desserts, Cruz breaks ground on a new era of California cuisine.

Isabel’s Cantina retails for $27. It is available at bookstores and online at Amazon, Crown and Barnes & Noble.