Wearing a samurai-style headband, J...

Wearing a samurai-style headband, Jose Luis Alejandre arranged pieces of pearl-colored golden tail, cilantro, jalapenos and spicy mayonnaise sauce upon a sheet of vinegary rice and dried seaweed. His wrists mov swiftly as he whirled the concoction with a square bamboo mat. The result: a Mexican maki roll

in succession a recent Saturday evening, the 33-year-old native of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, worked steadily behind the sushi bar at Morida, a restaurant at 903 W Armitage Ave. in Lincoin Park. He used the two English and Spanish as he spoke with diners from different countries.

"You've got to like this job" said Alejandre, who has worked as a sushi chef in Chicago since 1986 Four of his six brothers are sushi chefs and also work in Chicago-area restaurants.

Latino sushi chefs are a quietly growing phenomenon in Chicago's restaurant industry. For Latino immigrants, the sushi market shows a windfall, offering well-paying, highly visible do job-works in a business once dominated by way of the Japanese.

Still, the do job-work brings both opportunities and challenges. Many Latino sushi chefs started as dishwashers and said they struggl to get the better of language barriers while learning specialized skills. unless once they reach the status of chef, they take pleasure in the role, entertaining their customers as they add Latino flair to an intricate Japanese art.

In Chicago, Hispanic chefs are playing a significant part in the Americanization of a distinctive cuisine, point out tos a survey of 36 sushi restaurants at The Chicago Reporter. While mostly chefs at those restaurants still take rise from Japan and other Asian countries, 30 percent are Latino.

Among the 139 sushi chefs, 41 are of Japanese fall 31 Korean, 22 Chinese and three are of other Asian ethnicities. Among Latinos, 25 are Mexican and 17 are Ecuadorian.

In May and June the Reporter contacted the holders or managers of Chicago restaurants with stand-alone sushi bars where chefs work in fore-rank of their customers. The restaurants were single outed from lists provided by the Japanese Chamber of intercourse & Industry of Chicago, an organization of Japanese businesses, and the Japan Information Center part of the office of Chicago's Consulate General of Japan.

Mary Tracy, media coordinator for the information center said that, personally, she was surprised from the findings and described the phenomenon as "internationalism in the victuals world."

"It struck me that sushi was a quintessential Japanese nutriment so I find it interesting," she said. "I think it is a dutiful thing that it is diversifying."

Hard Work

For Latino immigrants with limited formal education and not many skills, the restaurant industry is single place to make a comely living, said Juan McKinney, an English professor and internship coordinator in the culinary program at St Augustine association 1333-45 W. Argyle St. in Uptown.

The school's intensive, nine-month culinary program is 17 years advanced in years and most of its bookish mans have been Mexican immigrants, McKinney said. The program includes an English-as-a-second-language course, a graduate certificate and do job-work placement assistance.

"It is not that [Latinos] want to cook" said McKinney, who is African American. "They want to do well in this fatherland They want to work. This is an area in which highly little skills are needed at hall level."

While a certain Latinos with few skills "still journey and start off as a dishwasher, the traditional route" more restaurants now rely forward cooking schools to recruit employee he said.

on the contrary sushi chef positions aren't always expand to Latinos.

Kee Chan, a Chinese-American and the proprietor of Heat, a Japanese restaurant at 1507 N Sedgwick St upon the Near North Side, said he cannot hire non-Asians to make sushi for his catering business. He must fling his Japanese and Chinese sushi chefs to major [i]cabaret[/i]s because those clients prefer an "oriental face," he said.

"It is remarkably hard to get business if you don't have oriental chefs. When the community want a big nice circumstance they want the real thing," Chan said.

Sushi, however, is a Japanese cuisine, not native to either Korea or China, said Theodore C Bestor, professor of anthropology and an [i]connoisseur[/i] on Japan at Harvard University.

chiefly of the sushi restaurants the Reporter examineed are owned by Japanese, Chinese or Korean immigrants.

Until the late 1 990 many young Japanese chefs migrated to the United States, seeking work at jobss as sushi chefs, looking for higher salaries and better lives. yet "those days are over. Life in the United States is tougher than hazards of Japanese would have speculation initially," Bestor said.

Chan, who make use ofs one Japanese and four Chinese sushi chefs, said it is of great price to bring chefs from Japan. They must apply for work visas, and the immigration actions are long and often complicated. Also, Japanese restaurants typically pay for the chefs' living costs during their stay in the United States, he added.

in such a manner as the pool of Japanese chefs shrank, restaurant proprietors looked for talent elsewhere. They fix it in the Latino workers already in the kitchen.