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Chefs Kim Alvarez, Owner, Avenida Restaurant

COLUMN = FOOD

As a graduate of Syracuse University’s restaurant management program and the two-year chef program at the Culinary Institute of America, cooking has been my passion since I was 7.

I clearly remember the day my mom enrolled me in a cooking class at Bloomingdale’s in Jenkintown, PA. It was Thanksgiving time, and our first assignment was to make homemade stuffing. I loved tearing the bread and combining it with the wet ingredients using my fingers. It was the best stuffing I had ever tasted, and every Thanksgiving I continue to make it for my family.

That’s what cooking is all about: bringing joy to family and friends through combining the best ingredients with some skill and a little magic. Now that my husband, Chef Edgar Alvarez, and I have children, we teach them to prepare the recipes that our grandmothers created. Rarely does a week go by when Emma doesn’t whip up a giant bowl of guacamole, or Alejandro doesn’t ask for some of Mom-mom’s matzoh balls.

I feel lucky to share the art of cooking with my kids and with my customers, too.

In my 25 years as a chef, I have had the privilege of working in some of the best kitchens in America, including Brad Ogden’s One Market in San Francisco and the Lark Creek Inn in Larkspur, CA, as the second-in-command at The Striped Bass under head chef Alison Barshack, and as head chef of Beaujolais in Philadelphia.

I also worked as a chef at several gourmet markets in Philadelphia, including Gerard’s and Patina.

At those establishments I learned not only how to prepare four-star meals, but how to lead other chefs so they enjoy coming to work each day. I also came to master what it means to truly take care of your guests.

We bring that to Avenida, and look forward to building a reputation as the go-to spot for fabulous Latin American cuisine in a family-friendly environment. We’ll look forward to seeing you soon!

ABOUT CHEF EDGAR ALVAREZ

Etched in my memory of growing up in Guatemala is the scene of my grandmother, aunts, and mother preparing a meal at my grandmother’s ranch outside the city. It was an all-day affair, for we were a giant family. When breakfast ended, all the women in the family would go off to the market to buy the freshest produce, meat, and fish for lunch and dinner. They did not have much to spend, but la comida was always full of love and flavor.

My mother was a truly amazing chef, although she would never consider herself one. But she taught me everything I know. I watched closely the way she would add some of this and not too much of that. She gave me a love for good, healthy, hearty food—just like the kind I prepare today.

When I came to this country, I worked as a sous chef at some of the best restaurants in Philadelphia, including the original Dock Street, the four-star restaurant The Striped Bass, and the gourmet Chinese restaurant, Susanna Foo. I had the opportunity to work under the excellent chefs who cooked there, as well as Phillippe Chin and Keong Bahn, when I worked at Phillippe.

After fine-tuning my skills, I was ready to go off on my own in 1999 and became the head chef at The Black Sheep near Rittenhouse Square. Although Irish pub cuisine was new to me, I decided to combine what I knew well with traditional pub-grub recipes. We served elegant comfort food that received rave reviews, and later several awards, from Philadelphia magazine’s “Best Of” series, among others.

What I love about being a chef is that there is always something new and different to learn. And after I married my wife, Chef Kim Katz Alvarez, and we had our beautiful children, Emma and Alejandro, we moved to the suburbs and I was eager to see what the Main Line had to offer. I was not disappointed.

In 2004, we bought the Delaware Market House in Gladwyne, a 100-year-old establishment with a wonderful history that Kim and I turned into one of the most unique gourmet markets and catering companies in the region, as CNN Money noted. We closed the Market in March and soon after began working on opening our new restaurant, Avenida.

The goal for me as head chef at this new Latin American restaurant is to bring my childhood memories to life for my kids and my customers. I hope that everyone I cook for thoroughly enjoys their food, and leaves the table with a renewed zest for all that life has to offer.

For more information about Avenida, visit www.avenidarestaurant.com. And to make a reservation to sample the fine Latin American dishes that are getting rave reviews, call Kim Katz Alvarez at 267.385.6857.

My job is my hobby. I come to work to play.”

– Uli Becker, president, Reebok International

If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.”

– Joseph Addison

Sometimes the dreams that come true are the dreams you never even knew you had.”

– Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

4oz tequila + 1oz TripleSec + 2oz lime juice + 1oz simple syrup (sugar=water), 1 cup crushed ice. Shake + dance around the kitchen.

– Avenida Margarita

A truly forgiving person is someone who experiences all the anger merited by injustice and still acts with fairness and compassion.”

– Martha Beck

Remove those ‘I want you to like me’ stickers from your forehead
and, instead, place them where they truly will do the most good—on your mirror.”

– Susan Jeffers

That which grows fast withers as rapidly; that which grows slowly endures.”

– J.G. Holland, novelist

Success is about finding a livelihood that brings joy, self-sufficiency, and a sense of contributing.”

– Anita Roddick

The best reason to start an organization is to create a product or service to make the world a better place.”

– Guy Kawasaki

Let us seize the day and the opportunity and strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by its disappointments but by its possibilities.”

– W.E.B. Du Bois

Treat the attainment of happiness in the same way an entrepreneur would approach building a business — with a vision, plan, goals, and a systematic approach.”

– Ted Leonsis

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

– T.S. Eliot

You often meet your fate on the road you take to avoid it.”

– Goldie Hawn

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.”

– Steve Jobs, Apple, Inc.

Letting go of expectations is a ticket to peace. It allows us to ride over every crisis—small or large—like a beach ball on water.”

– Martha Beck

With ordinary talents and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable.”

– Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton

There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”

– JFK

A man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out.”

– Chinese Proverb

The important thing is not being afraid to take a chance. The greatest failure is to not try.”

– Debbi Fields, Mrs. Fields Cookies

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.”

– Thomas Dunn

The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.”

– Nolan Bushnell, founder, Chuck E. Cheese's

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?’”

– Brian Tracy

There is little success where there is little laughter.”

– Andrew Carnegie

The biggest flaw in our existing theory of capitalism lies in its misrepresentation of human nature.”

– Muhammad Yunus

The man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled.”

– Andrew Carnegie

Entrepreneurs willingly assume responsibility for the success or failure of a venture and are answerable for all its facets.”

– Victor Kiam

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

– John Quincy Adams

Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.”

– Eckhart Tolle

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”

– Robert Louis Stevenson

They who give have all things. They who withhold have nothing.”

– Hindu Proverb

Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now.”

– Jack Kerouac

If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.”

– Robert Fritz

Of course there is no formula for success except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.”

– Arthur Rubinstein

Always look at what you have left. Never look at what you have lost.”

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When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.”

– Henry David Thoreau

Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!”

– Andrew Carnegie

You don’t love someone because of their looks or their clothes or their car. You love them because they sing a song only your heart can understand.”

– L.J. Smith

Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!”

– Andrew Carnegie

The only dream worth having is to live while you’re alive and die only when you’re dead.”

– Arundhati Roy

Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true.”

– Leo Jozef Suenens

The dove descending breaks the air / With flame of inkandescent terror.”

– T.S. Eliott

I’m not afraid of storms,
for I’m learning to sail my ship.”

– Louisa May Alcott

Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same.”

– Francesca Reigle

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. 
Now put foundations under them.”

– Henry David Thoreau

We are all of us born with a letter inside us, and that only if we are true to ourselves, may we be allowed to read it before we die.”

– Douglas Coupland

There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.”

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We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.”

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Ripeness is all.”

– William Shakespeare

It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything anew, and in that there is joy.”

– J. Kristnhamurti, The First and Last Freedom

Never never never never give up.”

– Winston Churchill