Mexican food has been part of American cuisine since the invention of the taco. In popularity, it ranks in

the top three, along with Italian and Chinese. Mexican restaurants represent 8 percent of the total national restaurant landscape, according to CHD Expert, which collects and distributes global foodservice data. In fact, in 2014, Mexican food edged out the ham-burger as the third most common menu type.

But Mexican food has come a long way since tacos and burritos,

changing its image from a cuisine of convenience that comes in cans and jars to a culinary adventure with traditionally cooked torti-llas, increasingly creative fillings (think fish, pork or duck) and homemade condiments like salsa and mole.

Americans’ familiarity with Mexican food coupled with their increasing yearning for travel and adventure has opened the doors for Latin cuisine as a whole to slowly but surely emerge onto the U.S. food scene.

Fifteen years ago, all-you-can-

eat Brazilian and Argentinian steakhouses, called churrascarias, began to open in chain format in urban areas like Chicago and Miami. In 1998, Texas de Brazil opened its first location in Texas and today boasts locations across the country and overseas. Al-though Spanish tapas restaurants were introduced to Americans in the 1980s, they piqued in popu-larity over the past 10 years as Americans began to reject over-sized portions and waste in favor for more health-conscious eating and farm-to-table sourcing. A

truly Americanized yet successful version of Mexican food, Chipo-tle Mexican Grill, which opened in 1998, grew to 500 locations by 2006 and then exploded with 1,900 locations in 2013, according to a 2015 CNN Money report.

From fine dining to convenient eating, Americans have embraced Latin food, albeit on their own terms. While the cuisine is often Americanized to fit the average U.S. palate, its sheer popularity is a testament to the special rela-tionship that the two Americas share. And the romance of Latin

Cuba is normalizing relations with the United States, Brazil is hosting

the 2016 Summer Olympics and South

America is beefing up its culinary image. While

Mexican food paved the way for America’s love of Latin, Peru and countries like it are poised to steal

the spotlight.

By Dayna Fields

A little lAtin

Peruvian Scallop-Mango Ceviche from Dole Foodservice.

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food is attracting more Americans every day.

Passport to PeruIf you want to know what’s next for Latin cuisine in the United States, look to its epicenter: Miami.

“You feel like you need a pass-port to come to Miami,” says Chef Ana Machado, assistant profes-sor of culinary arts at Johnson & Wales University’s North Miami campus. “Here in Florida, south Florida especially, it’s extremely influenced because of its prox-imity to the Caribbean, a lot of Spanish-speaking countries and Latin America.”

Machado says her students are exposed to a “very strong Latin influence” in the city both on and off campus. Machado herself hails from Brazil. Classes she teaches include Global Cuisine, Food Science & Sensory Analisys and American Cuisine Today.

Machado says wherever Latin food is headed, Florida, Texas and southern California are go-ing to see it first. And this is what she sees: “In Miami alone, it seems like every other week, there’s a new Peruvian restaurant opening here,” says Machado. “In the past five years, Peruvian cuisine has really become the forefront of Latin cuisine.”

That may be due in large part to the Peruvian government’s push to promote the country as a global culinary destination. Every year since its inception in 2008, Peru hosts the biggest food festival in Latin America, called Mistura, which means “mixture” in Portu-guese. Both Peruvian and inter-national chefs gather in the coun-try’s capital city of Lima, which is known as the Gastronomic Capi-tal of America. This year, the 10-day festival, sponsored by the Pe-ruvian Gastronomy Society, runs Sept. 2-11 in the Green Coast of Magdalena del Mar.

Peru’s microclimates and ge-

ography is as diverse as its agri-cultural production, as it offers tastes of the Amazon, the Andes mountain range and extreme al-titudes. It grows more than 4,000 kinds of potato, more than 55 va-rieties of corn and it’s the leading exporter of quinoa.

The national dish of Peru is ceviche, which is increasingly common to see it on American menus at contemporary restau-rants, says Machado, in part be-cause it aligns so well with Amer-ica’s growing taste for fresh, local and healthy ingredients. “There is no way to call it ceviche unless all ingredients are fresh,” Machado says. “You have to use the lime juice squeezed out of a lime, not a lime-juice bottle.”

Ceviche is raw fish or seafood marinated in citrus juice, mainly lime or lemon. It’s served cold and often includes tomatoes, onions, chiles and cilantro. Like Peru’s potatoes, its variations are endless. It’s a great dish for chefs to showcase their local fish, Machado says, because its simple preparation lets the seafood shine. Whether you’re located on the East Coast, West Coast or in the Great Lakes region, choose a fish that is familiar to your clientele, and consider introducing cevi-che in the form of an appetizer. “Ceviche would definitely be a good way to explore Latin food,” she says. “You must use freshwa-ter fish from the lakes. Choose a comforting fish, and then add the new flavors.”

Dole Foodservice offers a unique chef-ready recipe for Pe-ruvian Scallop-Mango Ceviche. It’s part of Dole’s International Flavor Pairings, which highlights a different international cuisine each year. In 2013, the program featured Latin America.

A growing demand The U.S Census Bureau estimates that Latinos will make up about

30 percent of the Ameri-can population by 2020. If you’re not exploring ways to introduce Latin influence to your menu, you may be alienating a major demographic. Con-sumers spend more than $39 billion at Mexican restaurants each year, and that booming demand signals there’s a mar-ket beyond Mexico.

Chef Zachary Garza is execu-tive chef at NaoLatin Gastro Bar, a restaurant specializing in Pan-Latin regional cuisine. Nao also serves as a real-world educational experience for students at The Culinary Institute of America’s San Antonio campus. Garza is a Texas native, but both of his par-ents are from Mexico.

“I think Mexican food opened the doors for other regions in Latin America to be seen in the same light, and people get excited about discovering it,” he says. “I also think that having South America in our backyard helps a lot. We’re all one new world now, and we’re all connected, so travel to those countries are more inter-esting perhaps or more accessible to Americans now.”

Travelers are eager to have the flavors and foods from their trips abroad available in the States when they return. South and Cen-tral America are increasingly seen as safe and close destinations for tourists to visit. Travel and food TV shows are also heavy influenc-ers in these trends. And with the United States normalizing rela-tions with long-estranged Cuba, there’s even more media coverage of new Latin cultures.

“Why have we not seen a re-surgence of Italian food or Scan-dinavian food? First, you have countries like Peru and Argen-tina that have made a concerted effort institutionally, through the government, to sort of na-tionalize the cuisine and make

i t a point of

pride, and they do it because it drives tourism,” says Garza. “And, frankly, it’s kind of a glob-al trend right now. It’s a group of cuisines that was so cloistered for so long that now it’s just new and exciting.”

Cuisine from Peru and Ec-uador are fairly similar, he says, but Peru’s deliberate marketing strategy is why people are talking about Peruvian food, not Ecua-dorian. Brazil has also elevated its international spotlight, hosting the FIFA World Cup in 2014 in Rio de Janeiro, the same city that will also host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.

“I think that we’re in the na-scent stages right now. People are really just starting to be-come comfortable with the fla-vors of Latin America,” says Garza. “The interest has been sparked, more people are asking questions and guests are excited to try something new. Just like with Italian, French and Ger-man maybe 20 years ago, I defi-nitely think we’ll start to see it go more truly regional.”

Ceviche is an easy Latin starter dish for any chef to explore, Gar-

passion Chile Mojito from Dole Foodservice.

za agrees. He serves it with redfish or black drum, both native to the Gulf Coast region.

Yet Garza highlighted an even simpler best-seller that is com-mon to all Latin countries plus the Caribbean: rice and beans. Throughout history, these two ingredients provided for an ex-ceptionally nutritious yet cheap source of nourishment, and every country has its own version.

Garza touted congri, or arroz (rice) congri, as a traditional and popular Cuban side dish. Its sig-nature preparation calls for stewed black beans and white rice that’s cooked in the beans’ liquid, yield-ing a black-tinted rice. Vegetables like sauteed onion, peppers and garlic and spices like cumin, oreg-ano and bay leaf are added as well.

At Nao, Garza serves congri with Caribbean-style pork chops that are grilled crispy after being marinated in mojo, a popular Latin sauce that usually consists of minced garlic, onion and pars-

ley mixed with sour orange juice, lime juice, olive oil and a hit of cumin. “The flesh is cooked to about medium, and at the same time, we’re frying up this rice preparation so it gets a little crispy on the edges, served with congri and mojo on the side,” says Garza. “For middle Americans and the Midwest, it’s rice and beans and a pork chop, who doesn’t love that? It’s universal.”

A growing love for LatinLatin food will follow the same path as Mexican food, accord-ing to both Garza and Machado. In 10-15 years, Americans will be able to distinguish from Peruvian, Chilean or Brazilian food. “But we’re not to that point yet,” says Chef Abraham Salum, owner of Salum Restaurant in Dallas.

Salum was tapped by U.S. Foods to serve as a panelist for its inaugural Talk Shop Live session at the company’s Food Fanatics Live event in Dallas on March 30. As a chef who was born and raised in Mexico City—although he is half Lebanese and half Italian—he offered insights into how chefs are developing menus and getting inspired by Latino culture.

“I’ve seen an incredible change in the past 15 years where more and more Latin ingredients are on menus, and not just Mexican,” he says. “I find it’s becoming more of a global cuisine.”

For example, dulce de leche is a dessert that is common to Ameri-can menus nowadays. Pisco, a brandy produced in Peru and Chile, is seeing rapid popularity on cocktail menus.

“Argentina, Colombia, Brazil and Peru are the top [cuisines] of South America,” he says. “Peo-ple [in the States] don’t know as much about them, but they’re

starting to.”Salum noted an influx of Peru-

vian restaurants during his recent trip to Mexico City, all of which were serving ceviche. Like Mex-ico, Peru has many different re-gional cuisines that emerge from its many different landscapes. While the coastal areas dwell on seafood, the inland territories capitalize on beef, beans and po-tatoes. “They have a wonderful culture of food, and Peru has had a boom like we had in the United States about 10 years ago with cu-linary schools popping up every-where and everyone wanting to be a chef,” says Salum. “They have so many different types of corn and potatoes than what we have. They have one corn that’s almost black, and then aji amarillo—these long yellow peppers they use for sauc-es. Their variety of food is abso-lutely incredible.”

Sauces are key to Latin cuisine, Salum notes, as they are often used as condiments to help en-hance the food and further season the dish. In Mexico, for example, freshly made salsa is a table main-stay. In Peru, Huancaína sauce is found in nearly every restaurant. It’s made of the aforementioned aji amarillo along with queso fres-co, olive oil and evaporated milk as well as garlic, onion and salt.

“In Mexico, we have moles. There’s like 400 different varieties of all kinds of colors—green, yel-

low, red, pinenut mole,” he says. “The sauces are used to comple-ment, to accompany, certain meats or vegetables.”

Other ways to give customers a taste of Latin America can be found at the bar. Cuba’s mint mo-jito has already earned its stripes with Americans, and Peru’s pisco sour is slowly gaining traction. However, Salum recommends exploring mezcal, a distilled al-coholic beverage made from the agave plant. Or put a con-temporary spin on a classic, like Dole Foodservice’s Chile Mojito: muddled diced apples in a shaker combined with spiced rum, fresh agave sour, club soda and a splash of pineapple juice.

Welcoming some Latin influ-ence into a restaurant can be as simple as hiring a Spanish guitar player or as dramatic as bringing in Argentine tango dancers. There are myriad ways to give customers a taste of Latin America without taking them too far out of their comfort zone. And by introduc-ing new cultures and experiences to their clientele, chefs can use food to give the world a little more love and understanding.

“When [Peruvian] restaurants open, and people taste different things, and they want to keep trying things and explore with food,” says Salum, “for us, it’s like a dream come true, and I think all chefs think the same thing.”

Corn husk-wrapped bay of fundy salmon, chorizo serrano broth, braised kale, black beans and pickled onions by Chef Abraham Salum in Dallas.

Chef Abraham Salum, of Salum Restaurant in Dallas.

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