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| Enrique Olvera is one of "The World's Most Influential, creative and important Chefs" |
Since
his appearance as the only Mexican chef presenter on the roster at the
2008 StarChefs.com International Chefs Congress, Enrique Olvera hasn’t
skipped a beat. He has been named one of the ten most promising chefs by
Food and Wine magazine, and last year he was a featured speaker at the
international gastronomic summit Madrid Fusion. This summer he’s
published a book, UNO, which reflects upon modern gastronomy in Mexico
and features 100 recipes from his restaurant Pujol. The
restaurant, incidentally, was one of two restaurants in Mexico to be
voted among the top 100 restaurants in the world by the Sydney Morning
Herald this year.
Olvera
is widely lauded at home for harnessing the avant-garde techniques of
abroad, and with a flourish, unveiling home-style Mexican cooking and
straight-shooting street food, rethought.
Born
in Mexico, Olvera enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde
Park, New York in 1996. During his studies, he earned various awards,
including the gold medal from the New York Société Culinaire
Philanthropique, and the Jacob Rosenthal Leadership Award. Olvera’s
first job post-graduation in 1999 was at the Everest Room, one of Chicago’s top restaurants.
The following year, with fine dining and classical training under his belt, Olvera returned to Mexico City to open Pujol.
His goal: to re-imagine traditional, regional Mexican food, and present
its styles, flavors, and techniques in a modern fine-dining setting. As
he said, in an interview with Food and Wine, "Why would you make a foie
gras dish with apples when you can make it with black sapote?" Since
the opening of Pujol, he’s won numerous other awards, most recently GQ Mexico’s Chef of the Year.
Olvera's current projects include the Grupo Enrique Olvera, with his second restaurant La Purificadora, opened in Puebla in 2008, the gastro-deli Eno,
and Teo, a workshop dedicated to research and education. Additionally,
Olvera heads up food design for Mexicana de Aviación, Mexico’s largest
commercial airline.
