His Neighbor Was Murdered In Front Of His House. Now, This Chef Helps Fellow Immigrants Find Freedom

For Enrique Limardo, being a successful chef is both an opportunity to foster new talent and to feed those most in need.

Chef Enrique Limardo is commonly credited as the pioneer of modern Venezuelan cooking in the U.S. He is only the second Venezulean chef in the U.S. to receive a Michelin star, and his restaurant, Seven Reasons, was named one of the most important restaurants of the decade by Esquire. (Limardo has a second Washington, D.C., restaurant, Imperfecto, as well.)

While his culinary skills are well known, many may not know that Limardo came to the U.S. to escape violence and corruption in his home country of Venezuela. The chef may be firmly on his feet now in the U.S., but he has not forgotten his roots or the hardships he faced, which have fueled his passion for mentoring other chefs in Venezuela as well as working with a range of nongovernmental organizations (NGO) through Immigrant Food, D.C.’s first “gastro advocacy” restaurant. In this edition of Voices In Food, Limardo shares why helping not only immigrant chefs but all immigrants is important to him, and how he is using food as a conduit for change.