Siblings Nando and Valerie Chang’s Breathtaking Japanese-Peruvian Menu Is a Tribute to Nikkei Cuisine

These siblings bring the heat with their breathtakingly fresh, vividly flavored seafood dishes at Itamae in Miami.

The most impressive item in Miami’s Design District, essentially a large outdoor mall packed with luxury stores, is not the $30,000 watch at Bulgari or the $5,000 purse at Dior — but a $28 plate of squid at Itamae, a restaurant run by siblings Nando and Valerie Chang. Their bigfin reef squid are arranged like a flower, floating in a pool of vivid orange sauce dotted with mercurial, mesmerizing puddles of verdant green oil. The dish is a shock to the system, ripping with acid and tongue-encompassing heat thanks to the ají limo leche de tigre made from fermented chiles and yuzu. The green puddles are a housemade huacatay (black mint) oil that lends the dish herbaceous and citrus notes. To call it a roller coaster of flavor would be an understatement: It’s not a dish for those who favor gentle flavors, but rather for those who prefer an adrenaline rush with their food. I can’t help but take another bite.

At Itamae, nothing is subtle. Chefs Nando and Valerie are unapologetic and unrelenting in their approach to Nikkei cuisine (Japanese Peruvian cooking), which is laser-focused on sourcing the best seafood they can get their hands on and serving it with sauces saturated with flavor. Take the octopus bañadito, a maki-style roll, where supremely tender slices of octopus are served with a tapenade-esque spread of salty and briny botija olives and Kewpie mayo. Or order one of the many ceviches on the menu — the version made from fresh razor clam, octopus, and black grouper is delivered in a puckery ají rocoto leche de tigre with creamy avocado slices to cut the heat.

Nando is a self-proclaimed “acid shokunin,” using the Japanese word for a dedicated craftsman, while Valerie is a sauce savant — together, they are constantly pushing the limits of flavor. At the base of their full-throttle cooking is their leche de tigre, the spicy, citrusy marinade used on basically every dish at Itamae. It took years of trial and error to perfect, says Nando. “We stopped diluting our leche. Usually a recipe for leche de tigre will always dilute the lime juice with a little bit of fish stock, which is what makes it drinkable.” The siblings decided to skip that step altogether. “It’s very aggressive in its seasoning,” says Nando. The flavor is also due to what the Chang siblings have determined is the perfect blend of ingredients like raw garlic paste, MSG, fresh chiles, and lime juice, “streamed in with lots of patience,” explains Valerie.

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The menu at Itamae is dramatically different than it was when their father, chef Fernando Chang (also known as Papa Chang) first opened the restaurant in 2018 with a menu centered on classic sushi restaurant fare like miso soup and kani salad. A few weeks after Itamae opened, the siblings joined and set about changing nearly everything about the restaurant. “My poor dad,” Valerie says with a laugh. “We know he is very proud, though.”

The Chang siblings grew up in Chiclayo, Peru, as part of a Peruvian Chinese family. They moved to the U.S. when Valerie was 10 and Nando was 14, both of them tagging along with their single father to work. Papa Chang started as a dishwasher in restaurants but got promoted to work behind the counter at a local sushi restaurant “because he looked the most Asian,” says Nando. But the family’s draw to sushi and seafood was real: “We are from a coastal town. Our connection to the ocean is just very strong, something our father liked to remind us of,” says Nando. “My grandfather, for example, used to salt and age his own fish.”

Nando at first wanted to be a rapper and worked in sushi restaurants on the side to support his music career, having learned the craft from his father. Valerie was drawn to the kitchen from the beginning, working in restaurants in high school and, later, briefly attending culinary school. She cooked at restaurants in both Las Vegas and Miami, including for renowned Philadelphia-based chef Michael Solomonov. When Solomonov closed down his Miami restaurants, he asked Valerie to move to Philadelphia to be a sous chef, but she decided to stay put and instead join forces with her brother (who finally had given up his rap dreams) and father.

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Today, the Chang family has three restaurants that they oversee together. Itamae, Nando’s main project, closed at the end of August and will reopen in a new location as Itamae Ao, an omakase concept with 12 counter seats, in the fall. Earlier this year, the family opened Maty’s, an ambitious 150-seat restaurant dedicated to fresh but nostalgic Peruvian cooking, where Valerie runs the kitchen. Papa Chang heads up a sushi restaurant, B-Side, which will take over the former Itamae space. All in all, the family is tripling down on Miami. “I am very happy that our life led us to Miami,” says Nando. “It was a thing of destiny for us. I think Miami has so many stories and so many wonderful people living in it, and I, for one, I’m glad that Itamae was made here.”

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