Aliyya Swaby Photo
Raul Vasquez deftly sliced a raw slab of beef tenderloin into bite-sized pieces on the counter. He prepared to infuse it with a familiar medley of sauces from his native Peru — a medley that has become familiar to immigrants in Fair Haven too.
Aliyya Swaby Photo
Vasquez, who is 64, learned to cook typical Peruvian dishes — “cocina criolla peruana” — by watching his mother while growing up around the port of Callao, Peru. But he didn’t become a cook until he moved to the U.S. almost 50 years later.
He has been the chef at Peruvian restaurant La Molienda at 113 Grand Ave. since July 2011; his food fills the tables especially on weekend nights. For 20 years in Peru, he owned an exclusive restaurant that catered to well-off white tourists, who paid good money for tiny plates with fancy names, like “ravioli filled with conch and lobster in a crab sauce.”
Now his main clientele are local Fair Haven “hispanos” who want giant plates piled high with food, “because they work hard,” he said. One of his most popular Peruvian dishes is lomo saltado, which translates to sautéed beef tenderloin.
After slicing the meat, he added a bit of salt, pepper and garlic powder before throwing the mix into the hot skillet, already spitting with oil.
Vasquez vigorously juggled the meat in the skillet and bright orange flames sprang up, engulfing the food. The fire burning the meat gives it a nice flavor, “un saborcito agradable,” he said.
Next, he went to the produce station and tossed a handful of onions, tomatoes and cilantro in a mixing bowl. Again he added salt and pepper. Before and after adding them to the meat, he shook the skillet again, prompting more flashes of white-hot flame.
(A secret: the onions go in late so they are basically raw, “cruditas,” and you can feel their crunch with each bite.)
He grabbed three bottles and splashed in streams of vinegar, a Peruvian soy sauce called “siyau,” and a clear “special” sauce.
One of the most important additions to lomo saltado: a batch of greasy French fries sprinkled on top.
The final dish came with a large scoop of rice topped with cilantro, immediately flavored by the tenderloin’s savory sauce.
The dish is a Peruvian favorite, Vasquez said. After political unrest made his business untenable, he moved to the United States, first to New Jersey in 2002. He went to a friend who owned a Peruvian restaurant a few days after arriving in the country, and she gave him a job fifteen days later, knowing his background as a restauranteur.
La Molienda is an authentic Peruvian restaurant because it has a Peruvian cook, Vasquez said, although the owner Nardo Marin is Ecuadorian.
Vasquez’ face lights up when he talks about food. After he finished the lomo saltado, two men entered the restaurant and asked for a recommendation from the chef. Vasquez said he could make a simple dish special with a few additions: “Calamares, camarones, y cebollita! Calamari, shrimp and a little onion!” It would taste much better, he promised, and cost just $16.
“Bring me that!” the man responded, and Vasquez went back to the kitchen to get started.
This place is somewhat related to the old Machu Picchu restaurant, my understanding is that one of Molienda's chefs worked at the former.
Fair Haven is likely the most ethnically food diverse residential neighborhood in New Haven now, there's: Puerto Rican, Peruvian, Colombian, Ecuadorian, Mexican (several) including a few Cemita/Taco food trucks, and of course a great apizza place, Grand Apizza, and the standard American-Chinese style restaurant. Close on its heels is the Hill Neighborhood with it's share of Dominican, Jamaican, Puerto Rican and Mexican (this is of course not counting the food trucks, in which the Hill would win as probably the most diverse in the entire State!. I'd be happy to hear about all the other neighborhood's representations as well.