Ethnic chefs at home in Boston

The people behind the stove bring us more than a tasty meal; they bring us their cultures.

For decades, even centuries, Boston was a city of baked beans and cod. Going out to dinner meant pot roast or lobster, Parker House rolls, and a slice of pie. Then one courageous diner stepped across the threshold of a dark, little place where heady aromas of cumin and chilies, saffron and cinnamon perfumed the air. Intimidated but curious, he sat down and ate Indian curries, or Salvadoran pupusas, or Peruvian giant corn. And nothing has been the same since.

Today, dining in Boston might mean sushi one night, an Ethiopian feast the next, or an exploration of the latest in cross-cultural dishes-Peruvian ingredients woven into Italian food, the delicacies of South Asian melded with French techniques.

We savor all this. But sometimes we forget that the people behind the stoves, the chefs, the restaurateurs, the cooks, even the dishwashers are bringing us more than a tasty meal. They're bringing us their cultures. Today, the population of Boston is over 50 percent minority, and many are newcomers to the United States who brought with them their food as well as their desire to make a better life.

Restaurant work has always been a popular way to enter the workforce in a new country. A 2007 study by the Center for an Urban Future found that the number of Hispanic-owned firms in Boston increased by 97 percent from 1997 to 2002, and the number of Asian firms increased 41 percent in the same period. Many of those were restaurants.

The variety of ethnic restaurants, though, tells only part of the story. Longteine de Monteiro, owner of the French-Cambodian Elephant Walk, gives voice to what any restaurateur in Boston would say: "Where would restaurants be without Latinos?" Latino cooks, chefs, and dishwashers staff literally every restaurant in the city; they make the pasta you eat in the North End. They man the stoves at the fancy hotels. They bake the bread and doughnuts in your favorite coffee shop. Brazilians, Salvadorans, Colombians, Mexicans, Venezuelans, Dominicans are all famed for their culinary touch and for their work ethic.

Because of the men and women who create their culinary wonders in so many of Boston's restaurant kitchens, we have become a better city. Certainly a more flavorful city, and one that lures us, day after day, to sample what these newcomers have to offer.