{"id":5084521,"date":"2019-02-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-28T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ctlatinonews.com\/a-passionate-chef-and-his-worldly-cuisine\/"},"modified":"2019-02-28T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-02-28T05:00:00","slug":"a-passionate-chef-and-his-worldly-cuisine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/2019\/02\/28\/a-passionate-chef-and-his-worldly-cuisine\/","title":{"rendered":"A Passionate Chef and His Worldly Cuisine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cSkirt steak with lobster fried rice. A quail egg on top with a saffron mojito sauce. The steak marinated until it\u2019s like<\/p>\n\n\n

butter.\u201d As Rafael Palomino describes one of his favorite dishes he has created, my mouth waters, and suddenly I really want a skirt steak with lobster fried rice, a quail egg on top and saffron mojito sauce.<\/p>\n\n\n

As a talented chef, this is his gift: tantalizing taste buds and whetting palettes. Palomino sells thousands of pounds of skirt steak a year with the dish described above \u2026 and that\u2019s just one dish. Palomino spreads the love throughout eight different locations, five cookbooks and NYKitchen.com<\/a>\u2014a new delivery concept in New York City. Palomino says the end goal is simply to make people happy.<\/p>\n\n\n

\u201cI love what I do,\u201d says Palomino. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t feel like I\u2019m working. I\u2019m creating and making people happy. And that\u2019s huge. I enjoy it very much.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

Palomino first stepped inside a kitchen at 17 years old, as a garde mange (salad station) at the Verve Cafe in Brooklyn Heights. \u201cI loved it ever since,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n

Palomino\u2019s cooking has been widely influenced from his childhood in Bogot\u00e1, Colombia and his later travels around the world. His restaurant introduction in New York brought him the realization of his passion, and later his travels to Spain and France allowed him to work alongside culinary legends like Larry Forgione, Charlie Palmer and Michel Gu\u00e8rard.<\/p>\n\n\n

While he currently lives in New York, he has an established restaurant in New haven, Connecticut called Pacifico, which he opened 16 years ago after falling in love with the location.<\/p>\n\n\n

\u201cI drove by myself to Connecticut on a rainy Monday to go see the restaurant,\u201d recalls Palomino. \u201cI saw it and I loved it and I told my partners, \u2018We are taking this place,\u2019 and we took it. And it\u2019s been open ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paella<\/p>\n\n\n

The concept behind Pacifico came easy enough. \u201cHaving worked in Spain and France I understood the concept of tapas very well,\u201d says Palomino. Pacifico is an enhanced version of a previous restaurant he had and he wanted it to be about seafood, tapas and fun.<\/p>\n\n\n

As for inspiration Palomino says it\u2019s like fashion. \u201cWhen I take the kids out they will say they like something and I\u2019ll buy it and try it out,\u201d explains Palomino. \u201cLike vegan, people like vegan so I came out with a vegan main course.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

Fun seems to be a cornerstone in Palomino\u2019s restaurant philosophy. Sharing a bit of insight to his success, Palomino says, \u201cThere are three ingredients for the restaurant business:<\/p>\n\n\n