Expression through food
Nationally acclaimed chef makes debut with truck at the Wharf
Chef Timon Balloo has cooked for Luciano Pavarotti at one of the finest restaurants in the world, but this weekend he’ll be making chicken wings for you during a Super Bowl party at the Wharf Fort Lauderdale.
That’s how crazy and compelling and sad and serendipitous the restaurant business is these days — the next buzzed-about South Florida foodie destination can appear anywhere and out of nowhere.
On Friday, Balloo’s eatery, called Mrs. Balloo, will open in the foodtruck space formerly occupied by Hou Mei (from Temple Street Eatery’s Alex Kuk and Diego Ng) at the Wharf Fort Lauderdale, the popular open-air foodtruck bazaar and bar on the New River.
Mrs. Balloo is part kitchen, part stage for Timon Balloo’s distinctive way of expressing himself with food, most fully realized at Sugarcane Raw Bar Grill in
Miami, where the Plantation resident earned profiles in Food & Wine (calling him a “superstar”) and The New York Times (“16 Black Chefs Changing Food in America”), and a semifinalist honor for a James Beard Award (Best New Restaurant).
For all those lofty pronouncements, the menu at Mrs. Balloo
will be down-to-earth Southeast Asian street food, like the name on the truck an homage to Balloo’s wife, Marissa, the daughter of a Colombian mother and a Thai father, a chef in Los Angeles.
You’ll find bao buns, dim sum, crispy chicken buns, sushi-poke bowls, poke nachos and a Thai riff on elote, Mexican street corn. The iconic Super Bowl snack will not be mere chicken wings, but gochujang chicken wings, given a spicy-sweet kick from the cult-y Korean pepper paste.
Balloo says the food truck is a test: Will diners in and around Fort Lauderdale welcome his “soulful, indulgent flavor explosions”? Enough to eventually support a brick-and-mortar location? It sounds like he knows the answer.
“I’m excited to come to Fort Lauderdale. There’s such a movement happening, pockets of culture, arts and young energy. It’s got a different kind of pulse,” he says.
What’s more, Balloo says, it’s consistent with the worstkept secret among South Florida chefs: “Broward beats Miami for ethnic food.”
’Food is culture’
The 43-year-old Balloo spent his childhood in the San Francisco Bay area and at age 13 moved to Sunrise, where he graduated from Piper High School and met his wife while hanging out at Sawgrass Mills. The couple has two daughters, 12 and 4.
Balloo’s mother is Chinese, Black and Arawak, indigenous people of the Caribbean and South America. His father’s family is Indian by way of Trinidad. These cuisines melded indiscriminately and gloriously as he was growing up, providing a road map for his future.
“Food is culture. Food is a gateway to democracy and diplomacy, a gateway to communication and friendships,” Balloo says.
As a second-semester finance student at Florida International University, Balloo dreamed of a career as a chef (as a kid he watched TV chef Martin Yan instead of cartoons), but was “too insecure about making the leap.”
One night, Marissa brought their takeout dinner from Uncle Al’s Sports Café on Weston Road back to the car with a job application and news she had set up an interview for Balloo with the manager. Hired to do basic rookie food prep, he rose to kitchen manager six months later.
When a customer showed up at Al’s dressed in chef whites from the Bonaventure Resort & Spa, Al’s manager recommended Balloo to the man and he was hired. His first day at the Weston resort was Passover, when Balloo had to make 1,000 matzo brei omelets. And they had to be perfect.
“I loved it. I was addicted,” he says of the pressure.
While working at Bonaventure Resort & Spa, Balloo spent nights and weekends studying at the prestigious culinary school at Johnson & Wales University in North Miami. Later, as a junior sous chef, he helped Chef Michelle Bernstein open the John Mariani-blessed Azul in the Mandarin Oriental Miami (cooking for Pavarotti), then worked as a chef at SushiSamba on Miami Beach and in New York’s West Village.
A decade ago he opened the instantly popular Sugarcane in an area of Miami that began flowing with such retail and residential activity that it was given a name, Midtown, thanks in no small part to the fuse lit by Balloo’s restaurant. Sugarcane begat sister locations he helped open in Brooklyn and Las Vegas.
“All because she came out with an application at Uncle Al’s,” Balloo says, laughing.
Northern exposure
In late 2019, no longer involved with operations of Sugarcane (he retains a minimal interest), Balloo opened a new restaurant in downtown Miami’s historic Ingraham Building. Intimate (less than two dozen seats), colorful and kitschy, the restaurant was a deeply personal and reverent statement about the Chinese-Indian-Caribbean melting pot of his youth. He called it Balloo.
The reviews were uniformly enthusiastic for the chef ’s “delicious new journey” (Timeout), and again he was named a semifinalist for a James Beard Award in 2020 (Best Chef/South).
Two weeks after the Beard semifinalists were announced, pandemic closures began rolling over the country and the restaurant industry. Balloo the restaurant now sits closed, temporarily, the chef says.
His new outdoor project, Mrs. Balloo, is a bao bun’s throw from two downtown Fort Lauderdale hot spots operated by well-known Miami restaurateurs: Rivertail, by Chef José Mendín, is next door to the Wharf, and Bernie Matz’s Bodega Taqueria y Tequila is across the street.
But Chef Balloo is not a follower in joining this Little Miami on the New River; he has been on a years-long quest to open a restaurant in Broward County.
“I was so eager. It’s been six years I’ve been looking, talking to old friends about it,” Balloo says, rattling off a who’s-who list of confidantes: Dean James Max, Paula DaSilva, Giovanni Rocchio (Valentino Cucina Italiana), Andrew Balick (Tap 42) and Mendin, a close friend.
The opportunity in downtown Fort Lauderdale had become obvious to Balloo, who grew up socializing at the old Riverfront and the nearby Himmarshee District.
“I didn’t need to talk to Jose. I’ve been watching it before the guys came up here. I’ve always been scouting and watching to see how this city has kind of been changing,” he says. “The diversity is amazing, especially with young people. Because of the diversity, once you start hearing Miami names up in here, it makes all the sense.”
Broward beats Miami for ethnic food. Chef Timon Balloo
The diversity of ethnic food in Broward County has been a constant, says Balloo, recalling visits to Toa Toa, down the street from Piper High School, and Chinese and Peruvian dishes at China Pavilion in Pembroke Pines.
Unlike San Francisco or New York, South Florida doesn’t have a designated destination, a Chinatown or Koreatown, that makes it easy to find certain styles of cuisine. But that’s what keeps local gems authentic, Balloo says.
“So you’ve got to go to the one-offs and know where to hit these spots. My brag always to my Miami friends and colleagues is, Broward has better ethnic food. Broward beats Miami for ethnic food,” he says.
Miami has a lock on Haitian food and Indian food is a tie, Balloo says. But he gives Broward the edge on dim sum, West Indian food and everything else. He acknowledged that Miami has “stepped up” in recent years, but many Miami eateries serve a version of ethnic food that is too polished, says Balloo, who prefers the “grungy pho place on 441.”
“I’m not starting a beef, but it’s a reality,” he says, laughing. “The chefs, they know [for ethnic food], ‘Hey, I’ve gotta go up to Broward to go to Foodtown.’ ”
For more information about Chef Timon Balloo and the Mrs. Balloo food truck, visit TimonBalloo.com.