Nicole Cabrera Mills is a 2024 F&W Best New Chef

Laser-focused on Gulf seafood with an approach that blended live fire and raw bar, Pêche, from chefs Donald Link and Ryan Prewitt, opened to immediate acclaim in 2013. Originally a line cook on the opening team at Pêche, Nicole Cabrera Mills was promoted to chef de cuisine in 2019 and gradually made the food her own. She took this modern New Orleans restaurant and, in a transformative high-wire balancing act, shrewdly introduced bright, pan-Asian flavors, resulting in a hypnotic firecracker of a menu that appeals to locals and tourists alike.

Mills grew up in the Philippines and was raised by powerful women in the restaurant industry. Her grandmother owned a bakery business, and her mom ran a dumpling store. “She had a chile-garlic sauce for shumai that people wanted to buy by the jug,” recounts Mills. “I still make it at Pêche.” She moved to the United States to enroll at the French Culinary Institute, then spent time at places like Eleven Madison Park in New York City and Atelier under Alain Allegretti — today, Mills quips that she can “turn vegetables [with a paring knife] like nobody’s business.” At Pêche, she made the connection between Filipino and Cajun food, citing a long history of Filipinos in Louisiana that dates back to the 1700s, and today, she gravitates toward familiar flavors from the Philippines.  

“Pêche is when I started to see the similarities between the flavors of Southeast Asia and Louisiana, especially in how we use our vinegars as an accent to everything, in the backdrop of so many of the flavors,” Mills says. “We pickle two cases of chiles every few weeks just to get the vinegar out of it. When I saw that, I was like, ‘Wait, this is really very familiar.’ I started playing around with my flavors and pushed it a little bit more toward what I knew to myself was similar, which is the Filipino sourness. Because souring doesn’t only come from vinegar — it can come from so many things, from citrus, from acid, from fruit, kumquats, and tamarind.”

While you won’t see the names of the Filipino inspirations behind dishes (like sinigang or kinilaw) on the menu, you’ll taste the flavors everywhere. Humble-sounding dishes like glazed turnips get a defibrillating jolt from a citrus-and-gochugaru glaze, and royal red shrimp get dressed in a nuoc cham–inspired sauce made of fish sauce, palm sugar, and local blood oranges. “The flavors are fun and exciting,” says Mills. “But then it comes with all of these Southern ingredients that everyone’s familiar with.”

The perfect order at Pêche Seafood Grill 

Gulf oysters

Pêche specializes in Gulf oysters, where you’ll find brilliant cultivated examples like Bright Side (from Louisiana), Admiral (Alabama), and Little Honey (Florida). They’re served with cocktail sauce and a ginger-coconut mignonette.

Marinated royal reds

Packed with flavor on their own, the royal red shrimp from the Gulf are dressed with nuoc cham; tossed with radish, kohlrabi, mint, peanuts, and citrus segments; and topped with fried shallots and fried dried shrimp (from Kho Market in Louisiana).

Grilled snapper

A whole snapper is wrapped in banana leaves, stuffed with tomato relish, and topped with pickled papaya.

Crab rice

Seasoned with Silver Swan soy sauce, the fried rice gets tossed with jumbo lump crabmeat and covered with a sweet, aromatic alavar sauce, a Filipino sauce made with reduced coconut milk and crab roe. It’s served with a cucumber salad, pickled red onions, and cilantro.

Shishito peppers

The peppers are grilled, drizzled with a salted egg vinaigrette (made from black vinegar and soy sauce), and garnished with Arbequina olive oil and sea salt.

Her favorite kitchen lingo

“Sometimes we say, ‘We’re in the seaweeds,’ instead of just saying ‘We’re in the weeds,’ which is kind of funny,” Mills says. “I don’t know if this is the South or just Pêche, I’m not sure — but ‘tiger paw’ is one of the terms that we use when a guest wants everything on the side, nothing touching. Tiger paw, it makes me so mad.”