Douglas Rodriguez on 15 years at Alma de Cuba

In early 2001, The Buena Vista Social Club was everywhere and Philadelphia saw a Latin food explosion.

Stephen Starr - in full growth mode after launches of the Continental, Buddakan, Tangerine, Blue Angel, and Pod - took over the lease of a posh, three-level Vietnamese restaurant at 1623 Walnut St. called Le Colonial.

Taking clues from its sultry atmosphere, Starr believed that a Latin concept would work there. He called on Douglas Rodriguez, the 1996 James Beard Foundation's Rising Star Chef of the Year, one of Newsweek's 100 Americans for the Next Century, and the chef nicknamed the Godfather of Nuevo Latino cuisine. Rodriguez is the son of Cuban emigres.

Rodriguez brought with him a young chef named Jose Garces, who had worked at his New York restaurants Chicama and Pipa. (When in 2003 Starr needed a steady hand to open El Vez at 13th and Sansom, Garces ran the kitchens at Alma and El Vez before leaving in 2005 to open Amada.)

Over the years, something interesting happened at Alma. Unlike many chefs who run their empires solely from their iPads - dropping in a few times a year, if at all - the Miami-based Rodriguez, now 50 and a father of three, still spends three to seven days a month at Alma.

Restaurants come and go. Alma is Rodriguez's only restaurant, though he plans to open Mojito Bar and Plates by Chef Douglas Rodriguez in Sawgrass Mall, near Miami, at the end of the year.

He's also leading the Havana Culinary Exchange, a week-long epicurean trip (Sept. 24-Oct. 1) to Cuba in which American chefs - including Philadelphia's Kevin Sbraga - will work with Cuban chefs. By "exchange," Rodriguez said he hopes to bring Cuban chefs to the United States for a visit.

On his most recent visit last week, timed to coincide with Alma de Cuba's 15th anniversary celebration, the New York-born, Miami-bred Rodriguez worked with chef Yun Fuentes to develop new dishes, including at least one based on cured lamb bellies.

Q. Let's go way back, since you've been working in restaurants since you were 14. How did you move from chef to owner?

A: It seemed like a very natural transition. Always for me, the role that I enjoyed most and gravitating toward was the cooking aspect of it, the creativity part of it. Once you get somewhat successful, you surround yourself with smart people, good people, inspired people, people who want to make a difference. That part has always been very easy, finding the right people. . . . We've made restaurateurs come out of this place [including Mike Isabella, Miguel Aguilar, Justin Bogle, David La Force, Chad Williams, Ted Torres, and Will Zuchman]. Attracting those kind of people and molding those kinds of people has been easy because people want to learn here. They come here to learn.

Q. How do you keep it going? As time marches on, you might get complacent or ...

A: It's easy to become complacent. It's an evolving game and any player in this game has to constantly evolve and change. I would say there are maybe six classic dishes [on Alma's menu] that haven't changed a lot, but the rest of the menu is a canvas for new stuff. You need to constantly grow and constantly be inspired. For me, being around younger people and using the people kind of like a focus group is what works.

You think about ingredients. You take a banana, for example. You peel the banana. You can slice it. You can fry it. You can grill it. You can boil it. You can serve it raw. You can freeze it. Different minds look at it in different ways and with more minds, it's an inspiring environment. It makes everybody want to be involved. I find that I'm very good at getting people involved. You've just got to listen to them. That's what we do here.

One of the best compliments I've heard - there's a couple of the chefs that used to work here said to me that whenever I'm around, they're more creative.

Q. Tell me about Cuban food in Philadelphia, compared with 15 years ago.

A. Let me tell you something. In three months of opening, there were three restaurants in Philadelphia with the word "Cuba" in the title. Whenever a review came out, all the major magazines said, 'the three new Cuban restaurants,' and we all got kind of reviewed and bunched together. What it did is cause a lot of confusion. Still today! I know people that post pictures on our Facebook page and they're at Cuba Libre [in Old City] and you can tell by the way it looks in the background. People have seen me, 'I've been to your restaurant. It's so beautiful, it looks like you're in a street in Havana." You're in Cuba Libre. ... People will call here and they'll be standing at the door of Cuba Libre and asking if there's reservations. You got the wrong restaurant.

Q. I'm actually surprised because they're so different.

A. This one's had always a reputation for dining and food, and their reputation's for a party, drinking and girls and everything. Dancing in there.

[Cuba Libre's chef, Guillermo Pernot, back then was chef/co-owner of ¡Pasión!, a onetime competing Latin restaurant on 15th Street near Walnut.]

Q. Back to the other question: How has it evolved in 15 years?

A. It has become, I would call it, tighter, more perfected, more techniqued.

Q. Is that indicative of what's happening in Cuba or is it just better chefs here that are executing?

A. We've all become better. We're all better chefs, we're all better. Better teachers and food has evolved in the last 15 years and we're sourcing better, we're finding better stuff. I've been to Cuba 13 times since 2013.

I'm writing a new book on Cuban food. I've learned a ton over the years. My first trip was like an eye-opener. I learned a whole bunch of things that I never knew about Cuban food. There's so many things, it's just unreal. You think you know about it, you've had the conversations, you really don't know until you go there, until you see it, until you feel it. It changes for you. I'm going to go a whole bunch more times. I'm meeting food historians, I'm meeting historians, I'm talking to different people, traveling to different cities and doing research on this book. I'm fascinated to how much I've learned in the last trips there. Every time I go, I learn a whole bunch of stuff.

When I was growing up, trust me, we had plenty of Hamburger Helper nights because we were poor, but I don't remember dinner with my dad sitting at the table that didn't involve beans and rice in some way. It could be white rice and black beans, white rice and brown beans, black beans cooked into rice, red beans cooked into rice, lentils and rice, yellow rice and white beans. Those were the vegetables, beans and rice. Americans have broccoli and cauliflower, Brussels sprouts. It was always beans and rice. That could be chicken one day and breaded steak or picadillo. It was always something with beans and rice on the table.

Q. Have you ever thought about moving up here?

A. A lot. Today we were having a conversation. We had an apartment here until 2007 or '08. I was just doing the math now with my wife and now the game changer is Airbnb. If we did have a place, I could Airbnb it the other 20-something days a month and still have the apartment, have the investment, and it would probably work out. Today we were thinking about it. We love Philadelphia. My wife [Nelly] is here with me now. She came to celebrate.