Raised in Chicago, Chef Alvaro Lima has led a varied career in the world of food service. However, as a personal passion point, he enjoys cooking with bold Latin flavors and creating Modern Latin–inspired dishes,bringing together different international flavors in order to create harmonious dishes that draw from multiple culinary traditions.
For Chef Alvaro, this approach serves as an opportunity to educate individuals about the similarities between different cuisines and global cooking techniques. “Whether you’re stewing meat Indian-style or you’re stewing it Mexican-style, you’re still stewing and using the same technique. Then you’re shredding the meat and folding it into a Mexican rice bowl or an Indian basmati, those ingredients are very interchangeable.”
From these points of commonality, it becomes easier to spot ingredients or dishes that might easily blend together or to discover techniques that enable this cross-pollination of different international flavors. From a consumer point of view, Chef Alvaro relishes the opportunity to introduce guests to new and brilliant combinations. “It’s important that diners become more aware of the different ingredients that are out there. It’s something new and exciting.”
When it comes to devising blended recipes, he recommends embracing an experimental method to help get the creative juices flowing rather than entering into the process with hard and fast rules. “The fun part for a chef is doing trial and error to see what works. It helps you step out of your comfort zone,” he explains. “When things don’t work, something different can still come out of it. You can tweak things here and there and end up with something that you never would have thought was going to work.”
“It’s about taking things that the diner is comfortable with but they never would have thought of marrying together.”
While some kitchen teams might be nervous about adopting the principles of borderless cuisine, Chef Alvaro explains that chefs can step in and help educate their staff on broader, more global food practices. “Even with cuisines they may have never cooked or tried before, there may be techniques that are familiar. Exposing a team to the ingredients and the culture is important, even if it’s through videos on YouTube or social media,” he says.
Chef Alvaro recalls bringing different cuisines together when creating birria ramen: a Latin-Japanese dish that he ideated after taking stock of the ingredients he had on hand. “I had stewed meat and a flavorful broth, so I wondered if I could fold in Japanese noodles and add scallions. I did this a couple of years ago where we married these things together. It wasn’t even fully intentional, birria was on the rise on menus and ramen was still doing extremely well in North American menus but it worked out wonderfully.”
Understanding the hesitancy that some diners might have around trying new dishes, Chef Alvaro explains that fusing together aspects of well-known dishes can be a good entry point into the world of borderless cuisine. “With the example of ramen with birria, the diner might think, ‘Whoa, I like ramen and I like birria, but I like birria in tacos and I like ramen with pork belly. Hey, let’s try it,’” he says. “It’s about taking things that the diner is comfortable with but they never would have thought of marrying together. This can help open diners up and make them feel a little bit more comfortable.”
He believes borderless cuisine can be a way of sharing his Latin heritage while expressing his personal interests, and sees it as an opportunity for chefs to share the depths and breadths of their own tastes and experiences. “With borderless cuisine, it tells a story of who the chef is. I can showcase what I grew up eating and what I still like to preach and share, but I can also introduce a new flavor,” he explains. “I love Japanese food, for example, so I can make a Mexican-influenced dish that is also very Japanese-influenced.”
He also thinks it’s important to combat misconceptions about borderless cuisine, namely, that it isn’t cost-effective. He feels that borderless cuisine can actually help minimize waste by unlocking new creative ways to reimagine how ingredients can be used. “The big thing is being able to take sauces and produce and repurpose them,” he explains. “Let’s say you make a dish and it doesn’t work out. Can you still build other dishes out of that? You can utilize just about everything, depending on the cooking technique, from that ingredient.”
Whether it’s introducing new combinations, finding ways to entice diners into trying new dishes, or getting inventive with minimizing waste, borderless cuisine promotes a sense of creative exploration.
