love rice and beans,” says chef Juan José Cuevas, sitting at a table in VC Lounge, the bar outside 1919, his fine-dining restaurant in the oceanfront Condado Vanderbilt Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico. “My mom and my grandma cooked rice and beans. But I wanted more than that.” And as anyone who’s enjoyed his duck-truffle ravioli or local snapper with lobster-ratatouille at 1919 can attest, Cuevas has more than realized his goal.
