Tis has a Spanish heritage and has lived in Spain, but does not think that any specific ancestry should be a requirement for Paladar cooks. “The owners try to find the best chefs for our concept,” he says. “It’s not at all based on heritage, but if a chef’s heritage gives one an in-depth knowledge, I would assume that would help. Most of all, you need to have a passion for the food and understand what we are doing with it. I think I can teach anyone how to cook this cuisine, they just have to want to learn.”

The Paladar team is young (Tis is 34), ambitious and fresh thinking; they invest tons of hard work and grassroots energy. The success has led to several locations: Cleveland, Ohio, followed by Annapolis, Md., Hallandale Beach, Fla., and now Rockville, Md. Openings in Tysons Corner, Va., and Gaithersburg, Md., are scheduled for early 2014.

Tis has been an important part of this expansion, joining the company as executive chef when Paladar’s second location opened in Annapolis. He is currently part of the Rockville opening team, functioning as both executive chef and corporate operations manager, which make him responsible for all back-of-the-house operations in the company.

Tis appreciates his current position. As the son of an engineer, there were expectations to follow an engineer path, so Tis studied at the University of South Carolina for one year before dropping out. He held various jobs including driving a truck for a moving company until he realized that what he always enjoyed was cooking. Tis graduated from The Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College in Philadelphia.

Along the road he has worked both front and back of the house for small and large restaurants in Pennsylvania and Delaware. Eventually, with two partners, he opened Ole Tapas Lounge & Restaurant in Newark, Del. Ownership was not the right fit. Tis admits, “I didn’t see potential for financial or professional growth, even after two years.” It was then that Paladar recruited him to come to Annapolis, and Tis is mindful that working for a forward-thinking company in expansion mode provides far greater opportunity to thrive.

What Makes It Latin?
Tis also understands that for Paladar to continue to flourish, it is key that the menu be accessible to all guests. That boils down to gently educating the customer who is intimidated by the “foreign” fare of the Latin menu. After all, just what does Latin food really mean?

The answer is complicated. “While Latin cuisine has many roots in Spain, it still has influences from other parts of the world,” Tis explains. For Latino food is as diverse as its people—a blend of Spanish, African and indigenous peoples, all with distinctive ingredients, recipes and food-preparation methods, and all influenced by history, geographic region and climate.

The early civilizations of the Maya and Aztec in Central America and the Inca in Peru devised preparation methods to make edible their raw materials such as corn, beans, potatoes, cassava (starch vegetable), vanilla, chocolate and the chile pepper. The arrival of the Europeans five centuries ago resulted in an exchange of ingredients and recipes between the Old World and the New. Rice was immediately assimilated into the local cooking. Further, the 19^th century brought the arrival of Italian, German, Japanese, Chinese, Arab and other immigrant groups, and new customs were integrated into the existing multifarious cooking styles.

Making It Your Own
“Paladar honors the diversity by representing several regions on our menu,” Tis says. And throughout the menu you will find accents of plantain crumbs and pumpkin seeds, Jamaican curry, key-lime mustard and chimichurri (a parsley-garlic sauce used in Argentina and Uruguay). “We even mix countries within one dish,” he says. “A Colombian-style roast chicken in Mexican chile sauce might be served with a Peruvian-inspired aji pepper aïoli, and a Salvadorian slaw.”

The entire staff’s devotion to guide the customer to try something unfamiliar has made dishes like braised-beef ropa vieja (which Paladar describes as Cuba’s storied dish of love and family) a favorite. And since the recipes are not a strict duplication of the traditional, there is also a heads-up given to those patrons who grew up with Latin cooking and might be expecting Grandma’s empanada. “We are not trying to be 100% authentic,” says Tis. “It’s our interpretation.”

The bold fusion style seems to appeal to all ages. At Paladar, you will find young and old sitting at the bar, enjoying hand-muddled mojitos made with pomegranate and ginger or mango and cilantro. (The rum bar offers more than 50 selections of rum.) Like the menu, the design is Latin Modern; it pops with energized colors, silver wallpaper and dark wood. There is a large colorful light display, which bathes the textured wall next to the kitchen in festive hues. It’s a place that feels like a lively party—where everyone is welcome and comfortable.

Feijoada, chimichurri and ceviche may not yet be household words, but Tis is part of a close-knit team that is having fun acquainting us. “There are endless possibilities for future creativity,” Tis says. “There must be a million Latin dishes that we haven’t yet tried.”

Lynn Schwartz, a former New York City restaurateur, is a writer and writing instructor/coach (fiction and nonfiction) based in Maryland. Visit www.writerswordhouse.com.