Michelin star recipient. James Beard 2025 Best New Restaurant semifinalist. Number 36 of North America’s top 50 restaurants.
Allen Street’s Corima boasts some of the most coveted accolades in the restaurant industry, but that’s the least interesting part of its story. The same goes for chef and owner Fidel Caballero.
Best known for his experience at three-Michelin-star Martin Berasategui in Spain and New York’s Contra, Caballero curates both à-la-carte and tasting menus showcasing Corima’s signature “progressive Mexican” cuisine. His cooking draws on his upbringing on the border of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, as well as a career path spanning from Olive Garden to the top of the Michelin Guide.
“My adult life started when I started cooking,” he said. But before he entered the kitchen, Caballero got his start like many in the industry: bussing tables in high school. Immersed in El Paso’s punk scene, he snuck out at night not to commit juvenile delinquency, but to pick up shifts at bars where his older friends from the music community worked.
Working his way from busboy to dishwasher, Caballero landed his first kitchen gig at Italian chain Olive Garden. And despite the low-brow cuisine, the corporate titan provides what Caballero described as “one of the best experiences for a brand new person that wants to learn what it actually means to be in a restaurant.”
“You learn from this corporate world where there’s already standards. They provide you with the tools for you to actually succeed in your job.” Chief in that toolkit is speed. “I have to thank Olive Garden for the speed. Not to season or make sauces, but definitely speed,” Caballero said.
After leaving Olive Garden, he studied automotive design, backpacked around Europe, and then returned to El Paso, where several unfulfilling cooking jobs prompted him to rent a food truck off Craigslist.
Serving up David-Chang-inspired Asian fusion, “it kind of felt like a pirate ship, you know?” Caballero said. “You’re 23 years old, 22 years old, and you’re your own boss. You’re feeling your own self in the world … until you need to start paying taxes.”
The truck launched his next chapter after a satisfied customer offered him a job in Shanghai and a one-way flight. “We were at the movies and they called me,” he said. “I told [my wife] Sophia, I was like, ‘I think we need to leave the movies. I think we need to go pack.’ The next day I blinked and I was in front of a gate going to Shanghai.”
“When I went to Europe, I knew I wanted to be a cook,” he said. “When I went to Shanghai, that’s when I figured out I wanted to be a chef.”
Training in China shaped the progressive Mexican cuisine that defines Corima. “In Mexico, food is so natural. People create wonderful dishes just out of the blue, and it’s just normal to eat that well,” he said. “At that moment, China was also offering that to me.” Chinese influences shine through in the miso-glazed beef heart and marigold ice cream served last week.
When it came to opening his first restaurant, Caballero said, “It was always Chinatown. In my heart, it was always Chinatown.” He and Sophia renovated an empty bus depot into today’s Corima, which opened in January 2024. They earned a Michelin star the same year.
“We opened the doors to this place and I was like, this is it,” he recalled. “And they’re like, well, it doesn’t have a hood. Or a walk-in. It’s not a restaurant.”
“It looked like a City MD in here,” he said — no hood, no walk-in fridge. For a year and a half, the kitchen didn’t even have gas, only three induction burners. But you wouldn’t know that today based on the sleek, dimly lit interior and pristine kitchen.
As the kitchen evolved, so has Corima’s focus on tasting menus — a dining format that fell out of favor during the pandemic but is making a comeback. Caballero offers 13 dishes for a mere $125, suiting a culture shifting away from fussy fine dining. What began as about 30% of reservations has risen to 80%.
“From day one, we were like, we’re not going to show our guests the menu. We’re just going to feed them,” he explained. Having earned diners’ trust through pop-ups during Covid, Caballero now confidently says, “People don’t know what they want to eat.”
He was right. Standing in the kitchen, I had no idea I wanted pepper-glazed carpaccio or a raw egg yolk on top of a crisped tortilla. And it was perfect.
Corima translates to “circle of sharing,” the kitchen itself organized around a central butcher block. Sharing Mexican and Chinese ingredients and techniques from American chains to Spanish haute cuisine, Caballero has redefined borders and created a New York staple.
Corima is located at 3 Allen St. For more information, visit corimanyc.com
