Any accomplishment in your 20s is huge. Career moves, maybe a family, marriage. But what about becoming the executive chef of one of Houston’s most popular new restaurants? Some might be deterred by taking on such a huge role, but not 26-year-old Adrian Torres of Maximo.

When he was a child in Aldine, he used to sit in front of his parents’ TV and watch Cake Boss on TLC. The creativity and artistry that went into each cake inspired him to get into baking.

“Any chance I could get, I would have my mom help me make like a box cake, or cheesecakes and cupcakes,” Torres says. “For anyone’s party, I would make the cake. That’s the way I started.”

When he entered his freshman year of high school, he took a home ec class, which helped him get more of an introduction to traditional cooking, alongside other homemaking activities. As the years went on, each class he took within the elective became more focused on cooking. During his senior year, when he had to choose between the culinary program or band, he surprisingly chose the latter. But post–high school, his eyes were set back on culinary school.

While his peers were applying to universities, Torres was sending in applications to places like the now-closed Art Institute of Houston—his dream college. But his legal status as a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient put a nail in that coffin, as the school couldn’t take him.

“At the time, that was devastating for me. All my friends [were] going to their dream colleges, and this is what I figured was going to be my dream college or thing to do after high school,” Torres says. “That was one of the first times I felt like ‘OK, my status is going to affect the rest of my life.’ But one of the beautiful things about being Latino—and something our parents always instilled in us—is if they kick you down, you get up as many times [as needed].”

To find his next best option, Torres jokes that he literally typed “public school culinary program” into Google. After doing his research, he settled on San Jacinto College. Torres had two options he could choose from in the school’s program: culinary or pastry. Although his first love was baking, he knew that the culinary program had the best chance of landing him a job in Houston. He could always go back to school for the pastry side if he wanted.

Torres dove headfirst into his classes. He did what he could to go the extra mile—paying close attention, putting in 110 percent of his effort, saying yes to every event, and always being the first to arrive and last to leave. This earned him recognition from his clinic director and instructor.

“On two separate occasions, very early on, they both pulled me and they said, ‘I see something in you,’ and as a young kid who [was] still figuring out their life, who was just a couple weeks ago feeling like I didn’t have an option—[like] I was out of luck because of my legal status—man, that put a fire in me like nothing else,” Torres says.

He excelled so much in school that Torres’s director leaned on him to delegate tasks for one of his classes, part of a course that allowed students to cook for events the school held. During this time, he learned just how demanding the industry could be, but he’s thankful that it set him up for success and taught him attention to detail and organization.

Before he even graduated, Torres accepted a job at chef Hugo Ortega’s Oaxaca-inspired restaurant Xochi. This came with a bit of luck. Torres’s friend worked there, and one day, the oyster-shucking person unexpectedly quit. The kitchen immediately began to look for anyone who could fill in on the spot, and Torres was there in no time. He knew being in charge of shucking oysters was a small role in comparison to where he wanted to go in life, but he proved to the chefs that he was fully committed.

“I was just learning as much as I could with every station I worked,” Torres says. “But I had reached [a point] where I couldn’t get promoted anymore because I was so young.”

After two years of experience at Xochi, Torres set out to find something new. He hopped around a bit, then took on a role at Belly of the Beast in January 2020. Of course, just a few months later, the pandemic hit. Rather than looking at this as a negative, Torres says he took the opportunity to learn from chef Thomas Bille what it means to deal with adversity and use your creativity to keep pushing on.

But in July 2021 the restaurant closed. Torres was left unemployed for a few months until he found his home at El Topo, the restaurant formerly in Maximo’s current space in West University. In August 2023, the restaurant’s chef and owner, Tony Luhrman, partnered with the Local Foods Group and rebranded to Maximo. At first, the kitchen was under the direction of Luhrman, with Torres as his sous chef. However, in October of last year, Luhrman stepped back from the day-to-day operations while remaining on as a partner, and in the interim Torres filled the role.

Then came his big break: the offer to become Maximo’s executive chef. Not long after taking over, the restaurant closed for three weeks to revamp the restaurant’s menu, which is now filled with dishes crafted by Torres. He jokes that if you visited the restaurant before the closure, you went to Maximo 1.0. Now, it’s Maximo 2.0.

Torres says the new menu serves “progressive Mexican” dishes. For him, this means keeping the authenticity of the food and ingredients but bringing a modern twist to it. He says the masa corn bread is the perfect example, made with housemade masa, chicatana butter, mole soubise (a mole that’s folded in a French onion sauce), hoja santa oil, and caviar. He believes it marries the best of both worlds to create a true Mexican American dish.

Maximo’s new menu also features shrimp queso fundido, hamachi crudo, a crispy fish taco, a charred octopus taco, a masa-crusted halibut, short rib mole, cauliflower asada, and for dessert, a tres leches or banana pudding buñuelo. But Torres says the best part about the menu—other than the fun he had creating it—is getting to watch diners enjoy the food on their plates.

“I’ve been in the clouds riding a high, [but there’s] definitely been a lot of hard work,” Torres says.

He hopes that the opportunities he has right now will help him bring other projects to fruition in Aldine—including his own taqueria. Torres says he wants to make food like Maximo’s more accessible for the community that raised him.

“I’m 26 years old, so my story is still kind of short, but I think there’s a lot more in the future, too, that will be told,” Torres says.