Chef Alex Pineda Reveals What It's Like Cooking for 'Amazing' Celine Dion as He Opens New Restaurant Qué Mas

Chef Alex Pineda is bringing culinary expertise to the suburbs of Boston.

The Chopped alum recently opened his new Latin-inspired eatery, Qué Mas, in Beverly, Mass., but has spent years learning from the most acclaimed talents in the food industry.

Pineda chats exclusively with OK! about the knowledge his iconic mother, Chef Lydia Shire, has bestowed upon him, what it was like to cook for Celine Dion and the process of opening his new eatery on the North Shore.

"I have so much respect for women in this world was because my mother was the breadwinner. She was the king of the household. She had three kids at 21 and her husband had left her. That's when she moved to France and went to culinary school. She's been hustling her entire life," the food expert reveals.

Watching the matriarch hold court in the most acclaimed restaurants in the city helped Pineda realize what he wanted to do. "Being in the environment that was my mother, who is very bold, eccentric, loud, but also very humble and quiet at the same time, she has the ability to walk into the room and everyone knows she's there, but she doesn't need to say anything or do anything. She floats with elegance, this beauty behind her. I fell in love with her ability to bring people together and make people just over the moon happy, regardless of what she did and what she didn't do," he notes.

One of the people that both Pineda and Shire have charmed has been the "My Heart Will Go On" vocalist whenever she's in Boston. "She's a good friend of ours," the Food Network star says.

"When her husband, René Angélil, was sick, he was at Mass General. She spent three months in Boston. A friend of ours had a connection and asked if my mother and I wanted to do lunch and dinner for them at her house for three months," Pineda recalls.

"When we started, she would stay out of the kitchen," the restaurateur reveals of the performer. "But then we'd start getting to know each other, and now whenever she comes into Boston, she actually calls my personal cell phone, asks where I am, what restaurant to go to. So that was a lot of fun with her. She's a total sweetheart and her family's amazing."

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When Dion comes back into town, she may head outside the city to pop by Pineda and Noe Ortega's new restaurant, which opened earlier this summer. "I knew what I wanted it to look like. I wanted a menu that's super easy for me. I knew what I wanted for service — I wanted a fine dining setting, but at a casual price," he notes of his vision coming to life.

"The beauty of being the owner is the bottom line really only affects us. I don't mind having a little bit higher over food costs and a little bit higher over labor costs to ensure that my guests leave happy and everyone is enjoying themselves," Pinda says.