Chef Mario Pagan has long been a fixture of Puerto Rico's restaurant scene, having purchased his first restaurant, Chayote, in the Miramar neighborhood of San Juan in 2000 from late chef Alfredo Ayala, a man Pagan considers to be his mentor. Books and television appearances soon followed, including a stint on The Next Iron Chef where he competed alongside another culinary notable who recently opened a restaurant in our town, Maneet Chauhan.
But it's Pagan's ties to Florida that offer a glimpse into his cooking ethos. After leaving architecture school in Miami, he committed to a future in cooking by enrolling in the culinary program at Johnson & Wales. In the mid-'90s, under the tutelage of Norman Van Aken at Norman's in Coral Gables, Pagan became immersed, molded and affected by the legendary chef's "New World Cuisine," which lent culinary legitimacy to the immigrant cultures of Latin America, the Caribbean, South America and West Africa. So much so that Pagan's first stateside restaurant, Chayote Barrio Kitchen in Winter Park Village, presents a menu rooted in what he's dubbed "Nueva Mesa Latina," or the "New Latin Table."
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While it's modern in every respect, Chayote's Latin-forward bill of fare "celebrates the heritage and culinary footprint of all Hispanic cultures and Latinx cuisine," and that includes alcapurrias ($14). This most Boricua of snacks has its origins in the Middle East and typically resembles kibbeh, at least in form. But here, the fritters fashioned from grated yuca, taro and West Indian pumpkin looked more like falafel crowned with tahini. I purposely ate only a couple of the pucks filled with roasted pork and topped with Colombian ají pique mayo, but couldn't help myself to the other two, knowing a plate of pulpo ($27) was on its way.
The cuts of tender octopus confit mildly piqued with pimentón dulce were served over a black bean refrito. But what caught my eye were the golden cracklings rising above the plate like miniature plumes of cumulonimbus.
I thought they were chicharrones but, in fact, these not-so-porky rinds were formed from tapioca via some good ol' fashioned molecular machination. I feared fumes of liquid nitrogen would accompany the adobo lamb confit ($42) but, thankfully, no such distracting novelty here. Beneath the shoulder's crispy shell was lamb so tender it was practically fluffy. The chunky cut sat up against a side of charred broccoli, a sauce of lingonberries, and gnocchi made from boniato, a root veg akin to sweet potatoes. The latter, slathered in chèvre crema, were so overseasoned they gave me the salt willies.
On another visit, the namesake chayote salad ($21), with its sultry blend of quinoa-dotted ghost shrimp nestled into watercress, avocado and cubes of chayote squash, seemed to be missing the advertised soursop. Sadly (for me, anyway — I love soursop!), the tropical fruit was removed from the salad and replaced with a soursop vinaigrette having no discernible flavor. But these are fixable quibbles, IMO.
Price aside, there's nothing in need of fixing with the pepiada ($23), a riff on the "reina pepiada" named for Venezuelan "curvaceous queen" Susana Duijm after she was crowned Miss World 1955. It isn't as shapely a starter, particularly for those who'd get the reference, yet the wee corn cakes topped with a chicken-avocado mash topped with osetra caviar were pleasingly function over form.
But Pagan taps into his inner Zaha Hadid in architecting the "lubina" ($52), Chilean sea bass coated in a thin dusting of panko, then seared and baked. The angular cut of fish is set atop three little asparagus logs snugged into a bed of truffle-buttered yuca mousse. A rich sauce formed from a holy trinity of ingredients — foie, port and veal stock — pools around the base, and I can see why it's Pagan's signature dish. The thing resembles the Antwerp Port House, one of Hadid's most famous works (look it up). He even serves it at his Mario Pagán Restaurant in San Juan along with other dishes that parallel Chayote's.
The barkeeps, BTW, are a proper friendly and experienced bunch. Ask for an off-menu creation called the "clairvoyant," with a base of Kyoto dry gin, Japanese bermutto and Chareau, to start things off — you won't regret it. Unless you have 10 of them. Which you might. To end things, both the torta de queso ($11) with goat cheese, passion fruit, mango gel and dark ganache, and the sweet tres leches ($11) with pistachio genoise and meringue, were carefully crafted cappers.
Pagan's symbiosis of elements from the New World appears to be attracting food-curious Winter Parkers to Chayote. And that symbiosis isn't just confined to the food and drink, either. The restaurant's interior is a seemingly disparate hodgepodge of bold contemporary and tropical patterns and finishes, but Chayote ugly it's not. The stylistic fusion comes together to form a cohesive, striking design, and the revivification of Winter Park Village is all the better for it.
There's no question Pagan's "Nueva Mesa Latina" will be a popular draw, as well as an integral component, of Winter Park Village's nueva landscape.
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