Meet the Chefs

Ivan Torres

Ivan Torres is a self-taught chef with a flair for the creative, an eye for the aesthetic and an affinity for innovation. In elementary school and high school, these energies went toward the visual arts—back then, he was a drawer who had every intention of becoming an architect. During this time in Mexico, he was unconsciously developing his palate through his mother and grandmother’s cooking. “My grandmom was a great cook,” says Chef Torres, “She was always mixing food from her Spanish roots with Mexican.” His mother was always picking up new cookbooks and trying as many spices as she could; Torres obliged by trying anything that was put in front of him.

He never realized the value of this until he moved to Wilmington, Delaware and took a job under Chef Banks to work the line at Harry’s Savoy grill. From the get-go, Torres was trying his hands at creating new dishes. “Harry’s was cool, because I could get my hands on anything, a lot of cool toys and a lot of really really awesome food,” say Chef Torres. From there, his development came down to one thing: “Books and books and books and books.” He kept his creative juices flowing by reading everything from Chef’s Companions to history books that let him see a culture’s food in the context of their country’s history.

Within two years, Chef Banks hired him to be a Sous Chef, and within a few years he was recruited to be the executive chef of one of Delaware’s most up and coming restaurants that prides itself on being different, Olé Tapas, where he still works today.

It should be no surprise that Chef Torres’s favorite chef is the shockingly innovative, almost controversial Catalonian chef, Ferran Adrian. He aspires to one day be like Chef Adrian, tether-free, inventing not just new dishes but new classes of food that test even the boundaries of what cuisine is.