|
This guy Roy has got
the car. I mean, it's sick. A loaded Eclipse with DVD,
Playstation 2, pop-out in-dash TV and another 12-incher in the
trunk because when you go to the beach, you need room to use the
fold-out dance mat (it's a video game). And the car has to be
comfortable because Roy's never home. He's too busy making
sushi-maybe 400 rolls a night, and who knows how many individual
pieces.
Roy Villacrusis is
the greatest unheralded, not formally trained, creative,
long-haired twenty-something Filipino-Spanish-Indian sushi chef,
working in the Miami area. Okay, he might just be the most
promising sushi chef of any kind, anywhere.
"I like beautiful
things," he says. "That's one of the main reasons that I got into
sushi. In the sushi bar, there's so much you can do."
And he does far
beyond the tuna-topped rice you're used to: Lobster rolls are
made with kimchi and served looking kind of like a lobster;
ceviche is garnished with squid ink reduction and orchid petals
(you eat them, too); marinated tuna with mango ponzu is served
with bamboo leaves - and the list goes on. His creations are
original, beautiful and - perhaps amazingly - appeal to the
average palate. Most, if not all people find that the flavors
live up to the looks, though Roy's modest about the preparation.
"All you need is rice, fish and seaweed," he says. And
inspiration. Roy's sushi is inspired by the arts he loves -
painting, architecture and other media he sees around town or in
magazines his uncle sends him. "I don't make anything that I've
seen before. I've had dishes that look really good, and then you
take a bite and you're disappointed. I don't work like that."
Roy may not be known
nationally (yet), but he's no secret to locals, and many followed
him from restaurants as he worked his way around the Miami area.
Now, he's at Mark's Mizner Park in Boca Raton.
"Thirty to 40
percent of my customers are regulars, they come in three to four
times a week," Roy says. He was planning to open his own place,
but former Mango Gang celebrity chef Mark Militello beat him to a
permit that granted exclusive sushi rights in Roy's targeted
location. In the spirit of "if you can't beat 'em," Roy asked
Mark and crew if he could join them. "I invited them to my
place. They came over. They liked it," says Roy. Now, Roy is in
charge of sushi operations at all Mark's locations, including
those in West Palm Beach. It's a competitive market, with
approximately 16 different sushi places within 10 miles of Mizner
Park location. All of them, though, are a long way from the
Phillipines, where Roy was born.
He left his parents'
house when he was 13 and moved to an apartment next door to his
aunt. He grew up learning about cooking from his mother and then
worked in restaurants in Manila during high school, falling in
love with the art of sushi during a stint as an assistant in a
Japanese restaurant. When he relocated to South Florida in his
teens, he tried to find a similar job, but it wasn't easy.
"It's hard to get a
job in a Japanese restaurant if you're not Japanese," he says,
referring to the cult of secrecy that often exists with Japanese
sushi chefs. "Japanese chefs in West Palm make you cut
vegetables," he says. "Then, when its time, they send you away
from the kitchen and make the sushi. I plan on going to Japan to
see home-style sushi techniques, but there wont be too many people
that will be willing to show me. I implement a lot of traditional
Japanese techniques, but I like to throw my two cents in."
Eventually, Roy went
to work in a restaurant owned by a Fillipino couple. "They gave
me a chance and later asked me to move in with them. It became a
24/7 thing - people go home and watch TV; I went home and made
sushi at home. In fact, many of the items that appear on Mark's
menu were created in Roy's apartment, where he says he feels he
can relax and work on his art. "I test stuff at home all the
time," he says. "When I'm in a restaurant, I'm very aware of
mess. At home, cooking with my girlfriend, food gets everywhere.
I think I'm better when I don't plan or think about it, when I
improvise."
One of the most
popular creations combines warm coconut curry with shrimp,
pineapple, cucumber, eel sauce and sesame seeds. For Mark's, he
named it Bakudan maki or "data bomb" roll. It's so good, he has
to make 60 to 70 per day to keep up with demand from clients,
which include celebrities. "Rod Stewart eats a lot of sushi,"
says Roy. "He's not down here a lot, but when he is ..."
And there's Tommy
Lee Jones, who had to wait. "Once, Tommy Lee (Jones) came In
early; I hadn't set up yet. My manager told me, "You should set
up some sushi for this guy." I said, "If I do, that will affect
all my other customers who come in here regularly, and mess it up
for them. If he wants sushi, he can come back after 5. "I was so
nervous, it was the first time I ever did anything like that. I
didn't know what would happen." In the end, of course, Tommy came
back after 5.
You would too, if
you knew Roy's work. He's been told, he says, that he has
million-dollar hands. "That's the biggest joke here," he adds.
"You know J.Lo supposedly insured her butt? People say I should
insure my hands - no personality, no looks, nothing. Just my
hands."
|
