Philadelphia chef and wunderkind Jose Garces is opening yet another high-concept Latin restaurant in early 2009. Chifa will take over 707 Chestnut St., serving a fusion of Peruvian and Cantonese cuisines. This hybrid was created in the late 19th and early 20th century, when a vast influx of Chinese immigrants came to Peru and began merging their own techniques with local ingredients, creating the style known as chifa.  Amada chef de cuisine Chad Williams, who assisted Garces in his victorious Iron Chef: America bid last year, will helm the kitchen. 

Garces and company hosted a holiday cocktail hour at Amada yesterday, and previewed just a few dishes they are working on for the new restaurant.  

A twist on ceviche featured a bright, luscious slice of big-eye tuna tossed with coconut puree and lime juice, topped with cilantro tapioca pearls and sharp, palate cleansing rounds of pickled jalapeno.  

A bite-size fried scallion pancake was crowned with impossibly tender sous vide pork cheeks, five-spice peanuts and pickled scallions. The Meal Ticket crew tried not to take a second pancake when the servers passed by with more tempting trays, and failed miserably. 

Meal Ticket was also treated to an insider-y tour of Amada’s basement prep kitchen, which hums like Penn Station at rush hour. Two young women gracefully managed epic sheets of chestnut fettuccine, while pork cheeks cooked gently in an immersion circulator beside them. The tiny, glorious bites that have turned Garces into a household name are created here, in an underground tunnel crowded with young cooks as sharp as their knives.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 18th, 2008 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Chef Salad, Openings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.