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Alfredo Landazuri landed on the Outer Banks 22 years ago from his native city of Lima, Peru. He had just graduated from a small cooking institute that he had enrolled in at just 17 years old. Back then, cooking schools were a new thing in his country.
“The first cooking schools in Peru had just started in the ’90s, so it wasn’t as popular there as in some other places,” Landazuri says.
But he had grown up cooking in the kitchen with his grandmother, and she passed down that passion of cooking to him. He arrived on the Outer Banks at 18 years old with no family, no friends, no English and just a few belongings to his name. What he lacked in possessions he made up for with ambition and a determination to get ahead. Soon after arriving on the sandbar, he was hired as a dishwasher at Basnight’s Lone Cedar Cafe.
“At the time I didn’t speak any English,” he says. “I could say hi and bye. So the only job I could do was washing dishes.”
In those first six months he decided he needed to make a change. He told himself if he wanted to grow and get ahead in the restaurant business, he would have to learn the language. He went home and switched all of his televisions to English. He started going to see movies in English. Every night when he got off work at Lone Cedar he would sit at the bar and talk to the American cooks.
“And I just started trying,” he says.
The trying paid off. After around eight months of dishwashing, he moved up to bussing tables and then to fry cooking. By the age of 22, he was the head kitchen manager at the original Stripers Bar and Grille. Twenty-two years later he has opened and managed many restaurants across the Outer Banks and Virginia and won 17 first-place awards for his cooking in the annual Taste of the Beach, Outer Banks Seafood Festival, March of Dimes and Taco Cook Off competitions.
Mahi Mahi’s Island Grill, opened in May of 2021, is his latest project with owners Andrew and Leslie Mikhail and his wife, Bobbie Landazuri. Now that he’s married with four amazing children, it’s a family affair, with his wife and children all working at the restaurant. Landazuri prides himself on running a small, local, family-operated business offering local, fresh ingredients with a twist of flavor from Latin America.
“It was very important to me to keep the restaurant small, opting for quality over having to rush out a high volume of food; however, while we keep the dining area small, we have a big space for big events, private parties and even weddings,” he says.
Two of the most popular dishes that represent this fusion are the Shrimp Pasta, which features local shrimp and fresh vegetables like squash, zucchini, carrots and onions and cilantro, and their Fisherman's Seafood Stew, which features mussels, shrimp, mahi, corn and potatoes. Both dishes are complete with a specialty broth featuring aji amarillo, a yellow pepper that is a traditional ingredient in Peruvian cooking.
To occupy his guests while they wait for a table, which is commonplace during the Outer Banks dinner rush, the Landazuri and Mikhail families built an outdoor area so that patrons can enjoy the evening. This year the outdoor space will feature live music, cornhole, drinks and small bites from their brand new food truck, Street Eats Latin Fusion, the Landazuri family's new adventure. Both Mahi Mahi’s and the Street Eats Latin Fusion food cart are currently available for events and catering.
While Landazuri says there are plenty of classic American dishes on the menu, he’s excited to incorporate flavors from across Latin America.
“It’s just a slight twist, but it’s always been my dream to bring more of the Latin flavors, not just from Peru, but from places like Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Chile and El Salvador to the Outer Banks,” he says.
And his dream has definitely come true.
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2217 S. Croatan Highway, Nags Head, NC 27959
