That’s the first thing you notice at the market, all the guys have hooks. As in Captain Hook: big and sharp, with wooden butts. They use them like extensions of their arms, like second nature. “I’ve never once used it as a weapon,” says Ed Cruci, one of the first fish sellers we stop to talk with. 

Héctor Sanz arrived in New York knowing no one. In his mind, this was a six-month hiatus from a soon-to-be settled life as an engineer in small-town Spain. In reality, he was about to embark on a career in the restaurant business that began with him as a bus boy in a bolero jacket and brought him to head his own burgeoning restaurant group.

“Love, technique and talent,” says chef Miguel Trinidad. That’s what it takes to make great food. And it describes the trajectory of his own career, which he traces back to his mother . . . and Saturday morning cartoons.