Chef’s restaurant dream now reality
Aquiles Chavez will remember 2012 as a pivotal year in his life.
Itwas in February that this executive chef and entrepreneur opened La Fisheria on 4750 Inker St. in the Heights.
The 5,000-square-foot eatery features madefrom-scratch seafood created with recipes from around the world. Chavez said he finds his biggest inspiration from traditional Mexican “country food,” as he calls it, that his mother and aunts prepared when he was growing up.
Those dishes include seasonal Mexican ingredients such as chiles from Oaxaca, cacao from Tabasco to make chocolate, fish from Ensenada and vanilla from Vera Cruz.
“It’s about the Mexican food,” Chavez said. “I want people to enjoy it and share it. I’m working with real, real Mexican flavors.”
More recently, Chavez has taken on a new challenge, having launched, on the Argentina-based Utilisima network, a reality show titled “Aquiles en Houston.”
The program will chronicle Chavez and his family’s move from their native Mexico to the Houston area to pursue Chavez’s dream to launch his own Mexican seafood restaurant. The show will have pockets of humor.
“This is about the fact of my life when I moved my family to United States, to Houston, to help me to open the restaurant and the show,” Chavez said. “It is very funny.”
Chavez is not a newbie to reality TV.
He already hosts two cooking shows broad- cast in Latin America: “El Toque de Aquiles” and “Aguilisimo.”
Part of the reason Chavez decided on a food-centered career is because of the importance his family placed on eating meals together. He’s never regretted his decision.
“I have good memories with the eating and sharing with the family,” he said.
“Sharing with my family at the table is very important.
“I decided I love to eat, and I started as a dishwasher in a restaurant and, when I was 19, I went to college in Mexico City in a culinary arts school,” he said. “I’ve had 16 years in the restaurant business, and that’s the only thing I’ve known in my life.”