Celebrated Chef Junior Borges Takes the Helm at Juniper in Austin | Eater Austin
"Borges will take over as executive chef at the group's flagship restaurant in Austin and plans to take the restaurant back to its roots, focusing on Northern Italian food while also including some Brazilian items. He tells Eater Austin that "I think Italian cuisine and European styles have always part of the philosophy of how I cook, focused on simplicity and high-[quality] ingredients." Borges says he is in awe of the restaurant's 10-year history in Austin but that the role of any good restaurant is to "always continue to evolve." With his team he added a scallop crudo with Texas peaches and a citrus vinaigrette, new steak options, a rock shrimp pasta with marinated tomatoes, and a tuna tartare mixed with tomatoes. "You can’t see the difference [between tuna and tomato] because it’s all red," he says. "It’s really fun." There's also a potato-filled pasta that Borges says "looks really pretty" and is served with butter, chicken jus, and truffles. "When you look at some dishes, there are only three or four ingredients, but there is a lot of technique and layers of flavor," Borges says. "It shows the vision of what we’re going for." - Courtney E. Smith
