One of my favourite places in Kensington Market is Segovia Meat Market [aka Casa del Chorizo], where I have been buying my chorizo for years. Leonardo Segovia is the proprietor and a friend, and I like to think of him as the Chorizo King because he runs the first Latino butcher shop in Canada, makes [...]

Rosa Maria Tortorici and I are ecstatic to report that our collaborative project was a huge success. Together, we devised a way to pull together a Spanish language lesson — with a nod to Rosa’s Living Spanish language school — while simultaneously conducting a Latino cooking class, which was my contribution. We sold out to [...]

I’m really excited and honoured, and humbled, too. The LCBO has picked me as their Featured Chef for the 2008 Winter Season Cooking Education Program. This is my second Latin Fever Series for the LCBO, and the first time in seven years that a South American chef has been chosen to be Featured Chef. It’s [...]

I’ve teamed up with my friend Rosa Maria Tortorici, who runs Living Spanish, a unique Spanish school, where she takes her students outside the classroom and to cafés, to the market or into her home to cook them a meal, all in Spanish. This way, she says, real life inspires their language learning and not [...]

This is how I learned about Pilar coming to town, which is exciting in itself. I got a call from Andrew Gardner, my old friend from my days at Xango, who’s now part of the management team at Reds Bistro. He and Reds Chef Michael Steh, invited me to come and talk to them about [...]

I’ve been stewing over this post and then putting aside and then picking it back up for a couple of months now. Wouldn’t you know it: just as I get ready to post, the Globe does a piece on sherries. And then my friend Tammy tells me yesterday that the Vintages site is featuring Spain [...]

Back in May I dropped in to say hi to my old friend Trevor Berryman. I first met Trevor in 1998, when he hired me as his Executive Chef at Xango. We made some real magic there. We got recognition as the best Latino restaurant of 2000, and added a star to our Toronto Life [...]