Meals That Made Them: How Nobu’s Latin-Asian fusion stirred Richard Sandoval’s new Latin empire.
By Ruth Tobias
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Tuesday, 23 August 2011 |
06:45
From Denver to Washington, D.C., to Dubai, from Manhattan to his native Mexico City, Richard Sandoval has founded an international empire -- 25 restaurants and counting -- on regional Latin cuisine in all its breadth and versatility. Around the turn of the millennium, when Tex-Mex still reigned supreme stateside and most Yanquis didn't know their horchata from their huitlacoche, the Culinary Institute of America grad began dishing out the likes of ceviche, sopes, pizza-like huaraches, and other dishes inspired by a childhood spent in his grandmother's kitchen, where he remembers spending a lot of time as his parents divorced.
"She was married to a banker, and there were always parties and events to prepare for -- so at a very young age I was exposed to all this great home cooking.
The Meals That Made Them
An occasional series by Ruth Tobias and Louisa Kasdon about American chefs and the meals that changed their lives.
"One of my favorite dishes was fideos secos -- dried noodles, pan-fried. You cook them in tomato broth, add chipotle, finish them off with crema fresca, and then put fresh cheese on top. It's amazing. I still eat it today. She always did a lot of braises -- I was introduced to mole at her house. I've always said that should be one of the mother sauces," he laughed.
But then, he might say the same of ponzu or miso. After all, Bon Appetit's 2006 Restaurateur of the Year has been a pioneer of Latin-Asian fusion as well as contemporary Mexican cookery, starting with the Denver branch of his restaurant Zengo in 2004, And it was a Japanese restaurant that sprang to Sandoval's mind when asked him about the meal that made him.
Fusion comes to life
"When I was in culinary school, I would always come to the city to try different restaurants, and somebody recommended I eat at Nobu. Chef-owner Nobu Matsuhisa grew up in Peru, and he was kind of infusing Japanese food with Latin ingredients. That was 20 years ago, but it was still one of the best meals I've ever had. I don't even remember who all I was eating with [laughs] -- there were about four of us -- but I remember the tuna sashimi with serranos, cilantro, and ponzu: the heat from the chiles, the acidity from the sauce, and this explosive note from the leaf. And then I had the black cod with miso.
"Everybody thinks he invented that dish, but it's really very traditional. And to this day, it's one of my favorites -- the butteriness of the cod, the sweetness, the whole thing was just amazing. Then there was a new-style yellowtail sashimi that he would flash-sear so it was sizzling. Right before it came to your table, he would just splash it with sesame oil. I think it had some sriracha too. From a Japanese cook, you didn't see this kind of heat.
"I fell in love with what he was doing with Latin ingredients. And now I kind of do what he did with Asian ones. Eating at Nobu, it just struck me that there was a very specific flavor profile [I wanted to emulate], not so much East–West as just well-balanced. If you go to my restaurants, you see me cook with spice, acid, sweetness. You hear people talking, ‘Did you get this? Did you get the explosion of this and that?'. When you hit so many notes, it almost makes the dining experience interactive."
Hamachi Tiradito
Serves 4
Ingredients
10 ounces sashimi-grade hamachi filet
½ seedless cucumber, sliced very thin into 1-inch by 2-inch rectangles
1 tablespoon sriracha
1 shiso leaf, chiffonaded
zest of half a lemon
about 4 fluid ounces ponzu (recipe follows)
Directions
Clean the hamachi filet by removing the bloodline and slicing against the grain as thinly as possible, as if for sashimi. Try to keep the pieces in edible portions, and as attractive as possible. The result will have the affect of tiled rectangles.
In a shallow serving bowl or rimmed plate, arrange the cucumber slices and top them with the hamachi.
Garnish each piece with a dot of sriracha and a bit of shiso leaf and lemon zest.
Ladle enough ponzu onto the plate so that it surrounds the fish and begins to saturate the flesh. (You will have some sauce left over.)
Serve cold with chopsticks.
Ponzu
Ingredients
¼ cup low-sodium soy sauce
2 teaspoon rice vinegar
1 teaspoon sake rice wine
1 teaspoon aji-mirin rice wine
1 cup yuzu juice
1 2-by-2-inch piece of dried kombu seaweed
Directions
Place all of the ingredients in a bowl and whisk together.
Refrigerate overnight; remove kombu before serving.
Zester Daily contributor Ruth Tobias is a Denver-based food and beverage writer. Since beginning her career in Boston, she has contributed to a wide range of publications, including Sommelier Journal, Mutineer, Denver Magazine, The Boston Phoenix, Zagat Survey, Culinate and the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food & Drink in America.
Photo: Richard Sandoval. Credit: Ruth Tobias
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