Let's
go back a ways shall we? I'd like to take you to a time where I
worked in the kitchen for a very busy local bar and restaurant. A
year prior, the children's dinosaur museum that I was managing had
come under massive financial duress and the owners had to close the
wrought iron gate doors for good. Sucks.
Thinking
I was going to grandfather myself into that job, I had absolutely
nothing lined up for me as a
backup gig. Worried, tense with money running out, my wife She-Ra
asked me to come work for her in the kitchen where she bartended and
supervised. At first I was very grateful but apprehension soon
slipped in. Thing was, I had never worked in a professional kitchen
before. Sure I worked in restaurants but it was usually serving or
bartending, although I had done some kitchen prep work in the past
and helped with a friend's catering company, but that's about it. She
immediately assured me that my basic kitchen skills, my love of
cooking and just knowing what a “pass window” was, that I would
do great at her place. So I took the job and found myself in love
with cooking professionally and did that for over five years.
Now I work in a library and write
about food on this silly blog.
But, hey!, this isn't about me this
time. This is about the night I met a young high school kid named
Carlos who was all of maybe, what?, 16 or 17 years old? They had
initially hired him as a host but seeing as we needed help in the
kitchen and he showed some interest and promise, we moved him to the
BOH. Um, that would be “Back Of House” for you non-service
industry cretins. FOH is Front Of House (that would be your servers,
bartenders, hosts, etc) and BOH is all the creff that slaves hard
over fire, is constantly cutting themselves with knives, lifts
roiling stock pots and work long difficult hours just so you have a
nice meal to send back because your stupid club sandwich “just
isn't working for me.”
Anyway, I immediately liked Carlos. He
was a good kid, always smiling, always flirting with the young female
servers and had a good hardworking if not cocky attitude. You need
that at times when cooking professionally and at the time that
kitchen lacked a good dose of young cajones barking through the line
announcing silently yet loudly “I got this!”
And he had it. What he had, we
couldn't pinpoint, but it didn't matter. What did matter was when the
kitchen had a rare quiet moment; perhaps it was that lag after the
initial dinner rush or some big game was so underway that food was
the last thing the patrons were thinking about, is when Carlos would
spring into action.
This
skinny high school kid would take bland, breaded, canned, boxed,
corporate restaurant muck and somehow transform them into high end,
extremely edible dishes. Sometimes they were just mere snacks, but it
didn't matter. One time, if I recall correct, Carlos just “whipped
up” a herby pesto, cut up a baguette, toasted the pieces, took some
deli meat and created a well crafted chartreuterie board, from
literally out of nothing and nowhere. Or the time he debreaded a
bunch of frozen shrimp, reimagined the alfredo sauce on the line,
finely diced some vegetables and made one of the best pizzas I had in
that place. How did he do this? These ingredients are crap and this
kid is making three star meals out of them! Unbelieveable.
Then, one day, he was gone. Rumor had
it that Carlos graduated Salpointe high school, moved out and was
never heard from again. This, dear readers, was not a happy time in
that kitchen. We missed the little bugger and now we were back to
limp bravado and having to eat standard fare because we were all too
busy and lazy to elevate the food drudgery from it's already over
processed state.
Some time passed, the restaurant
pressed on, until we got some news about our old friend. Turns out
that Carlos was in college studying marketing and was trying to turn
his life around after some rough times in Tucson.
“Marketing?”, I thought to myself.
“But that kid is a culinary wizard. He should be a chef, studying
at some high end cooking school. But, hey...if that's what he wants
to do then, by all means.”
As it turns out, it wasn't what he
wanted to do. At all.
“I made a choice at a
young age to drop everything and move to California and try and
become a chef,” Carlos told me recently, visiting him in his new
location in California. “I was still in college and working towards
a degree in marketing. I got a opportunity to work for a chef Hans
Wiegan in San Diego at the La Costa Resort. I took a weekend off from
school and went to San Diego to "stage", or try out,
for this well established chef. I got my ass kicked that weekend,
emotionally and physically but I left wanting more. That was it, I
never looked back. I then quit my job, left school and moved to
California.”
Whew. Okay. Now I was
beginning to relax when I heard that he was auditioning for chef
Wiegan and when he landed that opportunity and was on his way to
being a professional cook, things began to appear a bit brighter.
Because a kitchen without the likes of chef Carlos Anthony, is a bit
of a bleak future for the culinary world. I mean...marketing? Sure,
all well renown chefs have some sort of inner publicist living inside
them, among the turrines, arancini recipes, fish stock and hopeless
self doubt, if not you think we'd give two craps about Rocco
DiSpirito? No. He'd just be another punk kid chef that thinks he
knows all about the all about. But because the likes of him have that
spirit of self promotion, we now buy his cookbooks and buy into his
wholesome looks and approach to cooking on the television.
Well, it's a good thing
Carlos has that experience with marketing because in no time flat his
talents began to get the attention of some respected chefs in
California.
“From Hans I was able
to train under chef Richard Reddington (of Redd Wood Pizza restaurant
fame), then that led to working with chef Shane McIntyre which
eventually got me the job at Searsucker in San Diego.”
For
those that don't know, Searsucker is owned by celebrity chef Brian
Malarkey, who came to fame by competing on Top
Chef and
being invited back for numerous televised cooking shows and
competitions. It was at Searsucker that chef Carlos really began to
cut his culinary teeth, so to speak. And after working alongside
Malarkey for a good amount of time, Carlos knew it was time to expand
his horizons.
“It
was a crazy time at Searsucker,” Carlos explains. “I even got to
meet Thomas Keller (of French Laundry and Ad Hoc fame) who called me
'chef'. That was a surreal moment.”
Around
this time, a couple of restraunteurs and business partners were
gearing up to open a sausage concept in downtown San Diego. When he
heard about the opportunity, Carlos offered up his services and
pretty soon the ubiquitous Salt & Cleaver opened in the Hillcrest
area (www.enjoysausage.com, 3805
5th Ave, San Diego, CA
).
“Honestly
it was Ferris Bueller's Day Off,”
Carlos noted on the inspiration for Salt & Cleaver. “Really we
wanted to do a concept about Abe Froman, the sausage king of Chicago,
and bring him to San Diego. But after being shut down by Paramount
studios, we cleaned up the idea and created Salt & Cleaver.”
Salt & Cleaver was to
be more than a place to eat sausages and drink a beer. Chef Carlos,
now Executive Chef Carlos Anthony, beefed up the idea and turned
sausages on their casings by transforming them into “hot dog”
style concepts with a skies the limit approach to flavors and
textures.
There's the “Chicken
and Waffles”, which features chicken sausage, bacon, gravy on a
homemade waffle. Or the “Duck.Duck.Pig”, a bacon and duck sausage
topped with a bacon glaze, orange marmalade and crispy duck confit.
There's even a sausage take on the classic Vietnamese sandwich, the
banh mi, featuring pickled carrots, cucumbers, jalapenos, cilantro
and Sriracha hot sauce. A good dozen or so innovations of the hot dog
made with house made sausages and a ton of re-imagined deconstructions from the
talented Tucson native chef.
 |
| The infamous Duck.Duck.Pig... |
Not to mention all of the
other menu items such as fresh salads, flatbread and classic
sandwiches, loaded fries, housemade pickles and sauces and a meat and
cheese board to rival any Michelin starred restaurant that would, and
does, charge a heftier fee for the delicious fare they offer up. Yet
at Salt & Cleaver, you can enjoy such savory fare at a cost that
won't have to put your pets up as collateral or pawn grandad's ashes.
And that's the best thing about Carlos and Salt & Cleaver; it's a
very relaxed, very friendly spot, a bar concept really – with a
roll top entrance, intimate patio, full service bar and small
comfortable seating areas. There is no pretension here, because there
is no pretension in Carlos. Just skill.
 |
| The green tomato salad with bacon relish....unreal! |
When asked about his
approach to cooking, Carlos' response was a straight forward, “Simple
cooking with classic technique. I want my food to be approachable but
more importantly delicious.”
 |
| Deep fried housemade pickles with home made tzatziki... |
Delicious it most
certainly is! “I get a real pleasure out of people
enjoying my food,” chef Carlos muses. “I think that's why we deal
with some of the abuse so well; there is extreme satisfaction in a
successful dinner service or a happy guest.”
 |
| The "Board" at Salt & Cleaver |
Soon
after Salt & Cleaver took off, the owners wanted to open up
another place, a spot up north in Costa Mesa and this time it would
be tacos. Again, they just wouldn't be serving up just another taco –
oh no!, not if Carlos had is way. So, given the chance to transform
yet another classic dish, chef Carlos took the helm and became
Executive Chef for a second time, and this one would be for Taco
Asylum (www.tacoasylum.com, 937
S Bristol Street, Suite B102, Costa Mesa, CA
).
“They just loved what I
did with Salt & Cleaver so much, they just gave me the
opportunity to expand my horizons,” says Carlos. Sure it might be a
bit challenging commuting from one kitchen to another a good many
freeways away, but Carlos is and was always ready for a new
challenge, ones that will constantly test his skills as a chef,
manager, cook and individual all at once.
Again, his take on the
taco was uncanny, if not a bit maniacal. Think, duck mole. Think, wasabi
shrimp. Think, pad thai. And, yes, think about a bacon PB&J. Just
think about all that. Because I know chef Carlos did. And it's that
kind of thinking, that is making him quite popular and not just in
the back of house sense.
Which
is when a certain invitation came via social media arrived, Carlos
did not think twice and took this strange and once in a lifetime
chance all the way possible. It was from the producers of the Food
Network show Cutthroat Kitchen asking
if he'd like to be on the show. Once again, that marketing and inner
promoter came bubbling to the surface and of course Carlos said yes.
“It was a really fun,
humbling experience,” he notes commenting from his experience being
on the show. “I have no problem talking about my self so naturally
I nailed the interview.”
Remember that cocky
little kid I had mentioned earlier? Yeah. Nothing had changed.
Hosted
by walking food thesaurus Alton Brown, Cutthroat
Kitchen takes
new and weathered chefs though countless and brutal challenges all
the while having to cook a tasty and composed dish. Some of the
trials include cooking with boxing gloves on, or your prep table be a
fishtank and you have to figure out how to make the surface calm
enough to cut on or having to use a an easy bake oven toy as your
only source of heat...stuff like that. So when Carlos announced that
he was going to be on the show, we all gathered around the night his
episode aired and cheered him on.
To none of our surprise,
chef Carlos nailed each set back and delivered a savory dish no
matter what was thrown his way. But in the dessert challenge, Carlos'
cookie didn't come out so well, and intoning that bravado we all have
known to come to love and appreciate, he literally, let's say,
“finessed” his way to a deserved win. The cookie he presented to
the judges was a bit flat and not the best looking, but that did not
sway the man of the moment here. Carlos literally said this was the
exact same cookie he and his mom used to make, evoking a warm and
heartfelt tale of better times yesteryear, which induced much eye
rolling from the judges and Alton Brown himself from the clear and
present danger of pulled heart strings. It was such a synonymous
moment, that Food Network created a hashtag for his warm memory glow
tale of cooking with mom. #Momcard is now out there as
a way to explain no matter how dry and ugly your plate may be, it was
the way your mom made it and you wouldn't change a thing about your
dish.
 |
| And it's chef Carlos for the win! |
Those infamous cajones
had come back fully loaded and blazing in the televised limelight.
“The first show was
amazing,” Carlos beams recalling his experience on the show, “it
really highlighted my self and winning didn't hurt. I felt very
comfortable behind and in front of the camera and I look forward to
many more opportunities like that.”
Unfortunately, when he
was invited back to compete in the “Evilicious” cycle of
Cutthroat Kitchen, Carlos was, well, cut after the first
challenge and to this day we have no idea why. The contestants had to
make sushi and even through all of the weird obstacles that they had to
deal with, Carlos' dish seemed, on TV anyway, the most composed. I
still don't get it.
Chef Carlos was robbed!
And that is the bare
nature of the cooking beast. As Carlos slowly rises to the culinary
cream at the top, the journey itself is not always an easy one.
“Being a chef is a
tough lifestyle,” he recounts sweating over the fire as he turns
sausage on the grill. “I mean, long hours, grueling work, low
pay. Every day in the kitchen is a new challenge, a new problem
to overcome, but those struggles make the rewards so much
sweeter.”
When
asked about the daily toils of being a work a day, hands on chef, I
had to know what got him into the business in the first place. What
madness would a person such as himself have to possess to want to
stand all day, getting very little sleep and repeat the process
everyday and somehow make a career out of it?
 |
| Passing it down the line... |
“I got into cooking by
accident,” smiles Carlos recalling his angelhood days of working in
restaurants. “I was too young to become a server in a Tucson pizza
joint so they threw me on the line. With you actually! I fell in love
with the speed, the fire and the creativity. I was immediately
hooked. Beyond my first real start in the kitchen my grandmother has
been grooming me in to become a chef since I was tall
enough to stir a pot. I take inspiration and recipes I learned
standing by her side as a child all the time in my culinary
career.”
Knowing this and working
harder than ever, Carlos has already chiseled a niche for himself in
his early ascent into kitchen greatness. It's going to be a long
road, but, again, the kid is always up for whatever comes his way.
 |
| Cilantro lime chicken sausage curing to perfection... |
So with all that is going
on in his life and with his career, I had to know what is next for
him.
“Just onwards and
upwards,” Carlos admits with a shrug and a wring of his hands.
“We're thinking about a possible third location....who knows? I
really want our sausages to go retail and wholesale for a wider
distribution. Not to mention a couple of food apps are in the work
right now. Just keep moving forward. Another Food Network win
wouldn't be that bad. Ha!”
 |
| House created pretzel bites with a creamy white cheddar bechamel... |
After a good long chat
and consuming a good portion of what he has to offer on the menu, I
just had one more question for chef Carlos. Seeing as this is the
Tucson Homeskillet, I just had to hear about some of his best
memories of living and eating in Tucson.
“Oh
man,” he grins wide. “My best food memories are sitting in the El
Presidente table at Mi Nidito. Just traditional Mexican food
with plenty of love and I'm pretty sure Bill Clinton made that place
famous. I also can't find anything
close to our
Sonoran hot dogs wrapped in bacon and covered in beans and mayo and
hot sauce. So amazingly good. Man I wish I had one now.”
With that, we hugged and
I left not only full and a little high from the intense flavors and
meat, but also happy that an old friend had come so far in such a
short amount of time. It was really good to see chef Carlos succeed
at such a tender age and it's even better knowing he still has a ways
to go. For that, we are all lucky and better off for.
Now we just have to feel
lucky when we step into one of his restaurants, knowing he is back
there manning the line, stirring up something special all the while
concocting something new and delicious that will take us all back to
a tasty and possibly familiar place. But not too familiar. We've
already gotten familiar with that soon to be famous bravado of his
and chef Carlos wants us to go to flavor territories we hadn't really
thought about or even knew could exist.
For that simple reason, I
thank him for it. And you should too...
 |
| Chef Carlos: "I got this!" |
Camera
and Typing
Metal
Mark
Late
June, 2015
Metal Inspiration
Exodus "Pleasures of the Flesh"
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