When chef Richard Sandoval opened Maya on the Upper East Side in 1997, contemporary Mexican restaurants were hard to find in New York. Tex-Mex was still what most people understood Mexican food to be in the country, and they weren’t willing to drop a ton of money on a place like Maya. A few negative reviews followed.
“They said, ‘If I go across the street to Margaritaville and buy a combo plate for $9 why should I go to Maya and spend $50?’” Sandoval recalls. “That was the biggest challenge, trying to teach people that Mexican food was not all just fajitas, burritos, and nachos.”
Sandoval tried a different approach. He told critics they should compare his restaurant to Italian and French spots in the city. He had staffers send out plates of food diners had never tried and offer to replace it free of charge if they didn’t like it. “My approach was almost like a car salesman,” Sandoval says. “You open the hood and say, ‘I know you want this, but let me show you this.’”
The payoff was exponential: slowly, but surely, Maya became a hit—Ruth Reichl gave it two stars in The New York Times, writing that “the food at Maya is unlike just about anything else being served in New York City.”
It turned out that the UES restaurant was just the beginning. In the decades since, Sandoval has gradually expanded across the United States opening modern Mexican and pan-Latin restaurants in Florida, Colorado, and Illinois before going all-out with an international push in the Middle East and Latin America. Today, his hospitality group runs more than 65 restaurants across states in the US and 11 other countries. “It was kind of my incubator for what my future would look like,” Sandoval says of Maya. “This set the tone for all my restaurants.”
Read on to learn how he brought Latin American food to regions with little representation, how he’s nurturing the next generation of chefs, and make a booking at one of Richard Sandoval’s restaurants near you on OpenTable.
Latin American pioneer
Sandoval took the same approach he did in New York to opening restaurants around the world—introducing people to traditional Mexican ingredients and cooking in areas it was previously underrepresented.
When Sandoval opened an outpost of Maya in Dubai in 2006, the city’s Mexican food scene was similarly limited to Tex-Mex. To ensure the freshness of ingredients, Sandoval decided not to import everything from Mexico and instead set about finding ingredients like chiles from nearby countries like India. “You have to localize it,” Sandoval says. “Once you start doing these things, you see people in countries start growing these things.”
That turned out to be true when Sandoval opened TORO Latin GastroBar in Belgrade in 2013, too. That was one of the first Mexican restaurants in the country, and opening it had a big impact on the local food scene. “If you go to Belgrade today, you have avocados in the market, you have chiles,” Sandoval says. “Doing these things helps the community to grow different things and localize them.”
Laying down that infrastructure set the stage for others to follow. “It’s really opened that part of the world to Mexican chefs, ingredients, cuisine, and culture,” Sandoval says.
Setting up the next generation
Laying the groundwork for the future is exactly what Sandoval is focused on right now. He just launched a new annual mentorship program, Old Ways New Hands, to train the next generation of Latin American chefs. Earlier this year, 1,500 up-and-coming chefs around the country applied for 5 spots and a month-long trip to Mexico, where Sandoval led workshops about regional cooking, ingredients, and more.
“As I get older and try to think about my legacy, it is to start downloading my brain into other people,” Sandoval says. “There’s a lot of information, and unless I transfer it and give it to the other people, it’s not going to stay there when I go.”
And transferring that knowledge extends to his two children as well. His daughter Isabella Sandoval is an assistant general manager at his hospitality group, while his son Giancarlo Sandoval is the sous chef at his Tulum-inspired NYC spot tán. “I’m hopefully passing on the torch to them in the next five to 10 years,” Sandoval says. “I want to be playing golf and tennis and seeing it from a different lens soon.”
Until then, Sandoval isn’t slowing down. He recently opened Nikkei restaurant Casa Chi and an outpost of Toro in Chicago in May, his first-ever restaurant in Malta (a Toro Toro outpost), and is in the process of opening seven other restaurants this year, including in Spain and Cabo San Lucas. “There’s always a curiosity that builds in me about something new,” Sandoval says.
Here’s a full list of Sandoval’s OpenTable restaurants
USA
Arizona
Sedona
Scottsdale
La Hacienda at the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess
Toro Latin Restaurant & Rum Bar
California
Dana Point
Raya at The Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel
Colorado
Denver
Avon
Snowmass
Venga Venga Cantina and Tequila Bar
Toro Snowmass and Viceroy Lounge
Florida
Fort Lauderdale
Miami
Tampa
Illinois
Chicago
New York
New York City
Pennsylvania
Philadelphia
Texas
Austin
Fort Worth
Houston
Washington, DC
International
Canada
Whistler
SIDECUT Steakhouse at Four Seasons Resort Whistler
Costa Rica
Peninsula Papagayo
Mexico
Cabo San Lucas
Sora Rooftop Bar at Four Seasons Cabo San Lucas at Cabo Del Sol
Coraluz at Four Seasons Cabo San Lucas at Cabo Del Sol
Punta Mita
Dos Catrinas-Four Seasons Punta Mita
Aramara-Four Seasons Punta Mita
Riviera Maya
Tora at the St. Regis Kanai Resort, Riviera Maya
Qatar
Doha
Zengo-Kempinski Residences and Suites
Maya-Kempinski Residences and Suites
Serbia
Belgrade
St. Kitts and Nevis
Charlestown
Turkey
Istanbul
UAE
Dubai
Zengo-Le Royal Meridien Beach Resort & Spa
Tanay Warerkar is a content marketing manager at OpenTable, where he oversees features content and stays on top of the hottest trends and developments in the restaurant industry. He brings years of experience as a food editor and reporter having worked at the San Francisco Chronicle, Eater, and the New York Daily News, to name a few.
