The story of chef Ivan Torres has been told in some of San Antonio’s best kitchens. Just 26, the owner of the Mexican-Asian fusion food trailer Mai-O-Mai already has worked the stoves with chefs Geronimo Lopez at Botika, Luca Della Casa at Nonna Osteria and Steve McHugh at Landrace.
But like so many upwardly mobile chefs, Torres wanted something to call his own. Drawn to Asian cooking by the Peruvian-Chinese-Japanese menagerie at Botika and influenced by the food he grew up eating as a San Antonio native, he lit the fires on an idea to fuse Mexican and Asian styles.