BRIEFING MY KITCHEN
The Colombian born chef tells Amelia Levin about going from pop-up to permanent premises with fusion concept Phuc Yea
Cesar Zapata
My family came to the US in the late 1980s and I grew up in New Jersey before going to culinary school in Houston where there is a large Vietnamese population and I fell in love with Vietnamese cuisine. I joined the Four Seasons, eventually transferring to Miami to open the hotel there. When the economic crash happened in
2008 I lost my job and didn’t work for six months, so out of necessity I opened Phuc Yea as a pop-up. The restaurant name was my idea; my business partner Ani said I was crazy but in Vietnamese 'phuc' means blessing, prosperity and good fortune. We convinced a restaurant owner in the area to let us take over the space at dinnertime. She finished lunch service at 2pm, then we served dinner between 5pm
and 10pm, Tuesday through Saturday. We were able to move Phuc Yea into a permanent space in the MiMo district of Miami in 2016, just as the neighborhood was getting more popular. We call our concept modern Vietnamese or Asian fusion because it was inspired by our time in Houston, where I also cooked a lot of seafood and Cajun dishes. Since we’re in Miami, we also wanted to incorporate more Latin ingredients and flavors. Our menu is composed of five parts that match each of our five stations. There’s a cold station or raw bar where we serve oysters, ceviche, crudo and salads; a wok station where we prepare stir fries and noodle dishes. We use a 62-inch double wok burner next to a bain-marie
with all our mise en place, plus a prep table. You need to have everything right there because wok cooking is hot and fast. There’s a grill station and at our sauté
station we prepare dumplings and pho. There's an oven where we make our Texas-style smoked short rib and roasted pork. Our last station is our fryer where we prepare spring rolls and bao buns. Dishes are sent out as they’re prepared because the idea is to order a few dishes per person and enjoy the food family-style. We're changing the cold station in the lobby into a raw bar with seating and our outdoor garden will be a late-night bar space because people here love to party. In Miami if you don’t keep up with the trends people get bored and go elsewhere.
Dishes are sent out when they're ready for customers to enjoy family style
Our menu has five parts that refer to the five stations in our kitchen
We have a bain-marie containing prepared ingredients next to the wok station. Everything needs to be to hand
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