Burrowing Into Fine Dining
Underground Chef Efrain Cuevas takes haute cuisine to new depths
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After the second course, Beet Vermicelli with Hidden Gem Ravioli and Lemon Buerre Blanc, Cuevas stands up and prepares to toast the chef, lifting his “glass,” a measuring cup he’s been drinking Manzanilla Sherry out of all night long. His buddy Mahmud, who’s sitting next to me, tries to gain everyone’s attention. He lifts his wine glass and starts smacking it with the side of his knife: Clink clink clink. Clink clink CRASH! A huge chunk of glass breaks off and falls into the cup of his glass, diving into the dark liquid with a splash. Mahmud stares dumbly at the glass as the room erupts in laughter. He continues to stare, glass still raised. His girlfriend, who can’t stop laughing, leans over him, toward me. “Remember how he said he never drinks wine?” she says to me. I laugh. Mahmud finally lowers the jagged wine glass and grins. “That one was for my homies,” he jokes.
The guests continue talking, laughing, and drinking between courses. Cuevas sets down his measuring-cup-beverage and walks over to a stereo and starts playing swing music. The guests quiet down as he introduces the swing dancers. We all turn around to watch the dancers Lindy-hop and jitterbug all over the dance floor. After dessert is served, we have the chance to get up and try it ourselves. The dancers line people up and teach an impromptu swing class.
One of the guests, Jennifer LaFleur, a long-time friend of Cuevas’s reminisces about previous dinners she’s attended. She and her husband were walking to a dinner when they ran into a friend they hadn’t seen in six months. It turned out, she was headed to the same event. “It was such a night of camaraderie,” LaFleur remembers. “It was very cool to have this gourmet meal and meet all these different people—I met people who lived across town, across cities, who lived across the country, all over food. It was very cool. I was very proud of Efrain for bringing us all together.”
In recent months, Cuevas has started gaining attention from prominent chefs in the Chicago area. Last month, celebrity chef and author Art Smith, the long-time personal chef of Oprah Winfrey, asked Cuevas to help him cook an upcoming dinner party. “With his very charismatic, radiant personality and his hard-working spirit, I just thought this guy really knows what he’s doing. I just like his spirit,” Smith says. “He’s doing something that no one else is doing. I’m a big believer it's about working with each other and helping each other out, especially in the food community. So he’s there to help me and vice versa. And plus he’s just a good soul.”
Cuevas doesn’t hesitate to say that he’s found his calling. He knows exactly what he wants to be doing in five or ten years: “I’ll be cooking in Chicago,” he says definitively.
He believes there’s a real purpose in his work that extends beyond food. “It’s a way to bring people together. I’ve met so many new friends doing this. It’s this whole exchange of ideas and talents. It’s just something personal that happens at the underground supper club that doesn’t happen anywhere else.”