With his latest restaurant, this top Miami chef delivers a menu as diverse in its make up as the man himself

In an unbelievably short amount of time, Timon Balloo downright forgot how to speak Chinese. His mom had enrolled him in a Cantonese-speaking preschool, where he learned it fluently. Then he started public school, where at the time being different didn’t necessarily equate to being popular or accepted. In Balloo’s head, mainstream was the way to go.

“As a kid, I just simply forgot how to speak Cantonese.” Balloo recalls. “My mom would try to talk to me in the language, and I would just refuse to speak it.”

From his two parents, he’s a combination of Chinese, African- American, Trinidadian, Venezuelan and Indian. But for an early part of his life, he just wanted to be normal, whatever that is.

CULTURAL FUSION

As an adult, Balloo has been lauded for his successful career as one of Miami’s top chefs — training with some of the best in the business on the way there. His affable personality and savvy with ingredients made his first major Miami kitchen, Sugarcane Raw Bar Grill, one of the city’s most popular hot spots with locals during the dawn of Midtown and throughout the past decade, and garnered a distinction as a semifinalist for the James Beard Foundation’s “Best New Restaurant” award.

Recently, Balloo felt the itch to revisit that rich heritage which made him the very opposite of normal — special. When it came time to open his own restaurant late last year, he started thinking about the ethnicity he had somewhat closeted. As a nod to his family and background, he calls his new place Balloo; his last name obviously, but also a recognition of his legacy. The restaurant’s dishes have Asian and Caribbean influences mostly. In part because of that unique combination, the downtown Miami eatery has quickly built a following — and a likable collage of Instagram pics of his dishes.

A LIVING MELTING POT

Back when he was that little kid refusing to speak Chinese, his life was a fairly constant stream of change. His parents divorced when he was a toddler, and then he and his mom moved an astounding 15 times in 15 years. His mom, who typically made veggie-heavy stir-fries, soon got remarried to a Jamaican man and started adding callaloo and peas and rice to her cooking repertoire. That exposure to food from all over the world influenced Balloo’s desire to make a life on the culinary scene.

After high school, his girlfriend at the time handed him an application for a line chef job at a sports bar. Following a short, unsuccessful stint studying finance at Florida International University, that first job in a restaurant slinging bar food cemented that desire he had to cook, and Balloo started taking culinary school classes a couple nights a week. “I was like an addict. I couldn’t get enough of being in the kitchen,” Balloo recalls.

SWEET SUCCESS

Balloo worked under superstars Allen Susser and Michelle Bernstein before taking the head chef job in 2008 at Sugarcane, where he spent 10 years before deciding to open up his own restaurant. The new place represents a time for Balloo to finally tap into all those things that made him different as a kid. It’s not only the ethnicities, but what he learned from Susser and Bernstein — and from the girlfriend, Marissa, who gave him that restaurant application years ago.

She’s his wife now and works as the hostess on weekends (she’s also Colombian and Thai, adding two new ethnicities to Balloo’s exposure). And when the place gets really busy, their 11-year-old daughter Kirin steps in as the greeter-slash-hostess assistant.

It’s all a big change from Sugarcane (where he remains a partner), dropping from a 235-seat dining room to 35. But for the first time, Balloo says he has figured out who he is. “I’m cooking my food,” he says. “It’s 100 percent me on that plate. I’m putting out there everything I learned and everything I know about myself.”

Balloo Restaurant is located at 19 SE 2nd Ave Suite #4, Miami; 786-534-2768; balloorestaurant.com.

This story was originally published February 12, 2020 at 7:00 AM.