The word “hotshot” doesn’t usually convey likeable
qualities. But what can you say about a 27-year-old Culinary Institute of
America–trained chef who won the top slot at Eastern Standard at 25, left it
for a mellower (if less secure) foray as a chef in the San Francisco area, and
is back in Boston as the executive chef of a cozy ten-table storefront in
Jamaica Plain? Transitioning from one of the biggest marquee restaurants in
Boston to one of the tiniest, all without missing a beat — that’s Marco Suarez.
He’s a hard-working, turbo-talking, classically trained chef who has an uncanny
tendency to bubble to the top of the pot.
Why did you leave Eastern Standard? Working at
that speed shaves years off your life. I did it. I conquered it, and I loved
it. But after one baseball season, I had to ask myself, should I sign on for
another season of 96-hour weeks and 96 home games? It’s a job you have to leave
in the slow season, before the games begin. I still envy my friends who are
working there. But it does come at a price. You are always cooking for
high-profile VIPs — the mayor, the owner of the Red Sox — and you can get
caught up, engulfed, and lose the sense of why you started cooking in the first
place.
Why California? I’d always wanted to cook and eat
in the Bay Area. I cooked with some of the best at the most successful “in”
restaurants in San Francisco. But I’m not the only young chef who wants to work
in San Francisco. So I made excellent professional contacts and learned a lot,
but I couldn’t find a steady job.
How did you become a chef? If you had asked me at
15 what I wanted to do, I would have said music. I was very influenced by the
Latin-European food we ate on our yearly visits with my father’s family in
Argentina (my aunt is the producer of the Television Food Network in
Argentina). But the real truth is that I was the only kid in Greenwich,
Connecticut whose parents didn’t buy him a Porsche or a BMW at 16. I needed
some money to buy my own car. I washed dishes at a local restaurant, moved up
to the grill, and was noticed by a chef who was a graduate of the CIA in Hyde
Park. I went directly from my high school graduation to starting school without
any break from one to the other.
Where’s food going? Every time I wrote a menu for
a dish at Eastern Standard, Garrett Harker would say, “Take five things off the
dish. Simplify.” That’s good advice for a young chef. We try to do things that
are too complex. The future of food is simplicity, not foams. The future is
much more modern mixology than modern food, with drinks driving food instead of
the other way around.
What’s special about Bon Savor? And is it French-Latin?
Latin-French? Neither. Not fusion. We have a French
side and a Latin side — not French and Latin on one plate. More like the food I
ate in Argentina growing up. It isn’t Central American; it’s more like Peru,
the gastronomic capital of Latin America. It’s fun to work with cilantro and
ginger. I’d forgotten how good fresh ginger is. I like it that I can touch
every plate that goes out of here. I like writing the menus, redoing the wine
list, creating drinks. Also, we’re the only place in JP that has a full raw
bar, every night!
