Kitchens move to a Latin beat

At midmorning at Sibling Rivalry in the South End, what some chefs call the ''real" cooking of restaurants is well underway. Lilting Spanish wafts across the room as Simone Restrepo, the day sous chef, chats about the evening news with one of the prep cooks and then turns to talk to another who is stirring a stock. The common language here is Spanish, and -- along with some Brazilian Portuguese in other places -- that's true in almost every restaurant kitchen in the Boston area and beyond.

Latinos from South and Central America are the engine that keeps restaurant kitchens running: the dishwashers, prep cooks, pasta makers, grill cooks, and, often, people in charge during the day when soups, stocks, and more are prepared for nightly service.

Without their Latino staff members, some chefs say, restaurant life would grind to a halt. They're cooking dishes that are French, Italian, and contemporary American, most of which they learned on the job. From watching television cooking shows or reading the biographies of chefs in glossy food magazines, the dining public might assume all of the kitchen crew is culinary-school-trained. But many cooks start as dishwashers, quickly working their way up.

Dishwashing is an entry job, explains Wallace Oliveira, a prep cook and bread and pasta maker at La Morra in Brookline. The job at the sink can be a springboard to cooking.

And though Latino workers may be preparing cuisines unfamiliar to them, the influence of these cooks eventually filters onto the menu. Flavors from south of the border crop up in surprising ways, from arepas (South American corn cakes) served with roast pork to Dominican salads dressed with lime vinaigrette to a cross-cultural omelet of potatoes and onions.

Three restaurants illustrate the Latin beat: At Sibling Rivalry, Colombians dominate the kitchen. At La Morra, Brazilians are making pasta and appetizers, while a Venezuelan creates the desserts. Dominicans man the stoves at the Grapevine in Salem. Stories of these cooks -- how they got started, foods they miss from home, and what they aspire to -- have common themes.

Learning by watching
Restrepo, of Sibling Rivalry, was 17 when he came to the United States in 1989 to join his brothers. ''I started in the restaurant business doing dishes," says Restrepo, who formerly was chef de cuisine of Excelsior and now is responsible for getting the cooking started, supervising staff, making stocks and sauces, and other daily tasks at this new South End restaurant. In his early days at Biba, the Back Bay restaurant that became Excelsior, Restrepo moved up from dishwashing in six months to making salads and pizzas; a year later he was on the line. Unlike many American cooks who go through several years of expensive culinary training, Restrepo learned by watching. ''At that time, I spoke almost no English," he says. The 33-year-old chef, with a compact build and a steady gaze, still managed to ask questions. And Biba owner Lydia Shire, he says, liked the way he and other Colombians worked.

Also Colombian is Uriel Pineda, Shire's husband, whom she met when both worked at the Bostonian Hotel. Pineda also started at the sink. More than 30 years later, Pineda, 61, now does the purchasing and oversees operations for Sibling Rivalry.

Pineda credits his culture's focus on food with his own affinity for cooking. Both he and Restrepo came from large households, where, says Restrepo, ''my mother made big meals for the family -- breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner -- every day." With his seven brothers and one sister, he says, she was cooking all the time, and the young boy ''was always watching her." She made the traditional Colombian stews and soups. Now what he misses most is ''fresh cranberry beans and pork." Composing a recipe out loud, he talks about braising pigs' feet for three hours, then adding beans, onions, and spices. Someday he hopes to have his own place and feature a mix of Latin and American food.

Pineda, too, misses cooking from home, including a crushed corn dish his mother made, and the roadside shacks, where soups are cooked over wood fires.

Sibling Rivalry chef and co-owner David Kinkead has known both men for years; he traveled with them to Colombia several years ago. Kinkead and other employers say immigrants are required to show Social Security numbers and work visas and to pay taxes. The seven Colombians on his staff, along with several from Peru, Central America, and Mexico, ''really want to work, and they work hard," says Kinkead. ''They don't come here to slack."

He also believes the South Americans are ''great natural cooks. You can just see it in their hands, how they touch the food and treat it." Their food pops up in sometimes unexpected ways on his menu, he says; it's at Sibling Rivalry that arepas are served with a pork dish.

International houseof pasta
We might have a mental image of Italian women laboring over homemade pasta. But the reality is that the pasta maker is often South American. Oliveira, the La Morra prep cook, has graduated to the pasta station. Chef and owner Josh Ziskin says he made the pasta himself for the first 10 months that the restaurant was open. Then he taught Gabi Perez, the Venezuelan pastry chef, who in turn taught the Brazilian Oliveira. Now, Ziskin says, ''we all make it the same way." Even forms like orecchiette, tiny ear-shaped pasta rarely made by hand in restaurants, are shaped by Ziskin's crew. And although the kitchen has culinary-trained cooks, workers like Oliveira have an advantage. They ''have no bad habits," says the chef. He never has to retrain them.

Oliveira had never cooked professionally until he came here. Ziskin says the 29-year-old has made himself valuable, earning three raises in a year and a half. He's also indefatigable. After his eight-hour workday, Oliveira goes to the Living Room on Commercial Street, where five days a week he works another shift.

In the same kitchen, Brazil-born grill cook Jandir Cunha had been a truck driver back home. Pastry chef Perez considers him the restaurant's ''savior." Besides his other duties, he cooks appetizers for customers still at the bar ''after everybody else has gone home."

Perez came to Boston with her parents in 1970 when her father was studying for a doctorate at Harvard University and later took a job here. After the family returned to Venezuela, she earned a degree in human services -- ''mostly to please my dad," she says. Then she came back to the US and studied pastry making at several culinary schools. Her latest passion is gelato, Italian ice cream. ''Right now, I've opened a new world," she says. She can follow the seasons (her latest flavor is blueberry). ''It's amazing; now everything on the [dessert] menu has a gelato."

The Latinos at La Morra, she says, have a common work ethic. ''I think we go the extra mile. It's the relationship we have with the boss," she says. ''We go out of our way to make things work, to get the job done."

Cooking and camaraderie
The 17-year-old Grapevine is next door to the Dominican neighborhoods south and west of downtown Salem. The staff can walk to work. Cooks Rafael Lugo and Jose Mendoza both came in as entry-level dishwashers. In the small restaurant with an eclectic menu, chef Kate Hammond praises another cook, Carlos Candelario, also Dominican, for the restaurant's success. Sometimes Candelario, who is working less lately because of a heart condition, makes lunch for the staff. Hammond says: ''I'll eat it and I'll say, 'Oh, my. It's so good.' " Ideas from that lunch may end up reflected on Grapevine's menu. For instance, there's a Dominican salad dressed in olive oil and lime juice that the cooks make, and grilled calamari in coconut milk. ''Carlos is a wonderful cook," says Hammond.

Lugo returns to the Dominican Republic every winter for vacation -- his family still lives there. He and Candelario have worked with Hammond for years, originally in an Italian restaurant, then following her when she opened the Grapevine. Before those jobs, neither had cooked. ''I had really good luck," says Candelario, who explains that Hammond's husband, Vittorio Ambrogi, gave him a chance and taught him.

''Before, I could cook only plantain," says Lugo, 53, who makes a lot of the restaurant's grilled dishes. Mendoza, 29, finishes the composition of plates before they go to the dining room among other cooking duties.

What they value at the Grapevine is camaraderie. Hammond chides Lugo about his love for fried food, and Mendoza chimes in. ''It's fun," he says. ''It's a family here."