Andrew Enrique Cisneros opens Jalea in St. Charles

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Photography by Kevin A. Roberts

Crab Causa - crab salad, avocado, egg, citrus, aji Amarillo, whipped potato, olive

Editor's note: This article appeared in the December 2021 issue of St. Louis Magazine, under the title of "Hail, Jalea." The restaurant is open for dinner Wed-Sat and will open for brunch Jan. 9. In the following article, owner/chef Andrew Cisneros opines about his beginnings, his extensive resume, and his inaugural restaurant. 

 Despite the success of Mango, the beloved restaurant that introduced many St. Louisans to Peruvian food, the cuisine never took off like it did in other parts of the country. Andrew Enrique Cisneros—a 29-year-old chef whose résumé includes stints at the St. Louis Club, Elaia, and Privado—is aiming to change that. At Jalea [huh-LAY-uh] in St. Charles, he’s preparing Peruvian comfort food with a fine dining chef’s attention to detail. 

When did you know that cooking would become your career?

I was 15 when I began cooking for myself. It was a hobby at that point. Then I took some classes and I began competing while still in high school. Had I not pursued cooking, I thought I was a good enough soccer player to go pro, probably in Peru. But I got injured trying out for a semi-pro team and that was the end of that. So cooking it was. 

Photography by Kevin A. Roberts

Andrew Enrique Cisneros

Can you share takeaways from prior jobs? 

Jim Edmond’s 15 Steakhouse: I started on the floor, so it was fun bussing athletes’ and celebrities’ tables. After I enrolled in cooking school, I switched to the kitchen, and was amazed to see what beautifully composed and plated dishes came out of that kitchen.

St. Louis Club: I was lucky enough to be in the same kitchen as Pierre Chambrin, a classically trained French chef. He shared some of his personal recipes, some of the items that he prepared when he cooked at the White House. He taught me the different ways to make pâté and how to make pommes dauphine [deep-fried mashed potato and choux pastry puffs], a classic French potato dish that I got wrong so many times before I got it right.

Copper Pig: My first executive chef position. I was 23 at the time and recall the stress and pressure that came along with that. One of the house specialties was whole snapper that we scored and deep fried, and I remember cooking rotisserie-style guinea hens that sold out every time we offered them.

Elaia: I staged at Elaia when I was at the St. Louis Club but ended up there when Ben Grupe took over. As sous chef, I was basically a line cook, so I took a demotion, but it was worth it because I got a chance to work with one of the best chefs in the city. Both Ben and Pierre taught me the labor-intensive French techniques I was so obsessed with. Ben had just returned from captaining the U.S. Culinary Olympic Team in Germany. We would all come in early to work just to present him with what we thought might impress him.

Privado: Mike Randolph is on St. Louis’ elite team of chefs, for sure. Part of his concept at Privado was doing a multi-coursed dinner, like 15 courses, which I helped develop. We had a lot in common—he was classically French trained and he loved soccer—so it was a good fit.

The Ritz-Carlton, Amelia Island: I took a year away from St. Louis to work at Salt, their fine dining restaurant. There was one massive, connected kitchen that serviced all of the hotel’s restaurants. You could see the seafood restaurant getting crushed when the pub was slow, for instance, or vice versa. It was a weird thing to watch, with dozens of chefs basically all in the same place.

Dia’s Room at Cinder House: The prix fixe menu was similar to what we had done at Privado, so when I came back to town, Gerard [Craft] asked if I wanted to get involved. I remember doing a whole, roasted sucking pig, which was fun in a room where friends were often dining with strangers, watching everybody try to figure out how to get at it.

Original J’s Tex-Mex & Barbecue: I had been R&D’ing the recipe for pollo a la brasa, a familiar Peruvian dish that I remember from growing up. Mike [Randolph] needed help at Original J’s, and while there, he allowed me to tinker with my interpretation at some pop-ups. It was different enough to attract a following, and we began selling them out. That was all I needed to take the idea a step further and brand the idea.

How did Brasas, the pop-up trailer, come about? I love the dish, and I love the name, pollo a la brasa. “Brasas” means embers. The original idea was to outfit a trailer, park it outside of Ben’s AO & Co. [in Botanical Heights], and sell fire-roasted chicken. When a 12-week build-out became 36 weeks, we abandoned that idea, requested a refund, and decided to cook the chicken at a commissary kitchen and sell them in a heated display case inside of AO & Co.—just chicken and sauces, and only a couple days a week to start. We hope that we can start doing all of that before year’s end.

Courtesy Brasas

Marinated, spit-roasted chicken (aka pollo a la brasa)

Describe pollo a la brasa. It’s a staple dish in Peru that’s relatively unknown to people outside of Peru. The marinade includes lime juice, beer, and spices, so there are a lot of ways to spin it. The main spices are oregano, cumin, black mint, and ají mirasol, a Peruvian pepper with a more complex taste and intensity… We brine the chickens for three hours, marinate them overnight, and then wood-roast them in a smoker the next day, basting with the same marinade. It’s traditionally served with several dipping sauces.

Are there plans to sell the pollo at retail anywhere else? I hope to, but my ultimate goal is to find a brick-and-mortar location for Brasas. 

Who came up with the Jalea concept, and why St. Charles’ Main Street? My sister’s friend was looking to sell the furniture and fixtures to a sushi and ramen restaurant and have someone take over the lease. I’ve always wanted to do a restaurant on Main Street and thought this was my opportunity. There are now a lot of people from St. Charles driving to St. Louis to eat, and the reverse is true, too, especially since the pandemic.  

Is your sister involved in the business? She’s my partner and will manage the books and the financials. You’ll see different members of my family working the floor. I’ll be the guy in the back.   

Courtesy Jalea

Describe the décor. The rectangular space has brick walls and 32 seats. On one wall are colorful paintings from local artist and photographer Carol Lara. On the other are digital photos from her recent trip to Peru.

Talk about the menu. At lunch is a rotating menu of five items and a few sides, such as a Peruvian po’boy and a Peruvian-style street burger. We’ll use nice, disposable plates, sandwich boxes, and linenlike napkins. The idea is for people to feel like they’re in a Peruvian sandwicheria. On Saturdays, I want to host soccer watch parties, because soccer is a big part of the Peruvian culture and I want to nurture that. We plan to be open five days a week, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., with the menu changing over at 5 p.m.    

What items will likely be popular at dinner? At dinner, we get more serious and in-depth: There’s a snack section, a raw bar with ceviches and tartares, some small and large plates, and desserts. There will be 20 items max. In the snack section, there are yucca fries with my mom’s yellow pepper cheese sauce, called huancaina, and quinoa crackers that we make and call “chicharrons,” served with trout roe.

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Courtesy Jalea

Photography by Kevin A. Roberts

The raw bar section will have a classic ceviche (pictured above) made with firm fresh whitefish, marinated in tiger’s milk—which is just citrus and spices blended to the consistency of milk. We garnish it with sweet potato, red onions, and cancha, a Peruvian corn that pops from the inside out, sort of like corn nuts, but it’s soft in the center. There’s a crudo-style dish called tuna tiradito (at right and below) and several kinds of East Coast oysters, accompanied by Peruvian salsas (also pictured below).

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Photography by Kevin A. Roberts

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Photography by Kevin A. Roberts

And that’s just the appetizers. On the small-plates menu, the stars will be the potato croquettes and the crab causa (pictured at right), anchored by whipped Peruvian potatoes. We’ll keep the large plates limited to five, starting with arroz con pollo, which has similar spicing to pollo a las brasas, but a different cooking method and accompaniments. There’s a braised pork belly and potato stew, using sun-dried potatoes that get rehydrated in pork broth; the classic beef dish, lomo saltado, using stir-fried beef but with some unusual trimmings; arroz con mariscos, a Peruvian-style paella (pictured below); and of course the signature jalea (also pictured below), a platter of assorted  fried seafood with walleye, shrimp, calamari, yucca, plantain chips, fried rice, creole salsa, and house tartar. It’s a festival of food. 

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Photography by Kevin A. Roberts

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Courtesy Jalea

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So Jalea won’t serve pollo a las brasas? That’s the signature item at Brasas. It will be different, a standalone brand unto its own. We might end up with several Brasas, or that item could do really well at retail. We’ll have to see.

For dessert? A crème brulee using pureed lucuma, a Peruvian fruit that looks like an avocado but tastes like pumpkin. In Peru, they eat a lot of paneton, the Italian fruit bread, which we will make into a bread pudding, and serve it with banana caramel and vanilla ice cream.

Is it hard to source Peruvian foodstuffs in St. Louis? Some things you can’t get fresh. We’re growing our own black mint, for example, then pureeing and freezing it. Some of the Peruvian peppers and citrus are now grown in the U.S. Other items get shipped to us dried or frozen.     

What’s on the beverage menu? We’ll feature chicha morada, or purple corn lemonade, which has been around for thousands of years and is still popular in Peru today. You boil purple corn, strain it a few times, and reboil it with pineapple, pineapple skin, and such spices as cinnamon and cloves. We cool it down, add fresh lime juice, a sweetener, and serve it with freshly chopped apples and pineapple. It looks like a nonalcoholic sangria, and it doesn’t taste corny at all. Another drink we’re offering is toasted barley water, another Peruvian drink that’s steeped, strained, sweetened, and can be served warm or cold. 

How about alcoholic drinks? We’ll feature five signature cocktails, several pisco-based: a pisco sour and another, Chilcano, made with pisco, ginger ale, lime juice, and bitters. We might mix cachaça with Guaraná Antarctica, a rainforest berry soda that’s popular in Peru. Another popular drink in Peru is Fernandito, Fernet and Coca-Cola. I can’t wait to try that one out. We’ll carry Scarpetta wine products to begin with and local craft beer in cans and bottles, since Peruvian beers are hard to source in Missouri.

What will distinguish Jalea from the competition? Since Mango closed, I think the only place serving Peruvian food is Cocina Latina in the Central West End. So there isn’t much competition—in St. Charles, St. Louis, or the entire area. 

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Photography by Kevin A. Roberts