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Restaurateurs dedicate their lives to their craft and trade. They sacrifice time with their families often, if not always, missing dinner with their loved ones to instead provide dinner to their guests. The grueling hours, back-breaking work, and the occasional impossible-to-please patrons will test even the most experienced restaurateurs. Passion, drive, and vision can only fuel you for so long, and when it can’t, there are only two things that will — teamwork and food.
Family meals might be a lesser-known tradition to the average diner, but to those in the industry, it’s one that dates back to the earliest days of restaurants. Every restaurant has its own take on the before-service ritual, but if you happened to pop your head in a restaurant kitchen an hour before the doors open, chances are you’d see the staff fueling up before the chaos begins. We talked to James Beard Award winner Chef Edgar Rico about why he honors the family meal tradition at Nixta Taqueria.
Meet the Visionary
Edgar Rico, owner/chef of Nixta Taqueria
Past experience: Craft, Son of a Gun, Trois Mec, Sqirl, Pujol, Peached Social House
Awards: James Beard Award for Emerging Chef, Food & Wine Best New Chefs List
The ritual
Every day except Friday and Saturday, we do a meal where any employee can choose two items off the menu, so that team members can try the food on the menu and have an understanding of what they are eating, so that they can sell that better to our customers. Then on the weekends, we’ll do a rotation of one of our team members, whether it’s back of house or front of house that cooks something.
The gathering
The biggest reason why a lot of restaurants do it, it’s pretty much just a moment to be like, ‘Hey, let’s all have a meal together, before the doors open in a few minutes, and we’re gonna be like chickens with our heads cut off, running around non-stop for a few hours.’ So it’s that time for us to just kind of connect with one another, take a breather, and enjoy a meal.
The connection
We always like to encourage all of our team members to look for inspiration. I think it’s a fun way to kind of see how some people grew up, like, ‘This is something my mom used to make; this is a family recipe,’ and be able to share that little bit of culture with each one of our team members. And you get to see a little story about them through their food.
Family meals are just one of those things where you get to see a lot out of a person, and it’s your way of showing love to someone by cooking them a meal. You would only do that for people you love the most.”
Edgar Rico → Nixta Taqueria chef and co-owner
I always tell everyone here too, you spend more time with these people here in this restaurant than you probably do your own family, so you would never cook something terrible for your family. You wouldn’t be a very good family member if you did that. So I think people have that mindset here, they resonate with that.
The respect
I remember the first time I ever had to cook a family meal. I remember back, back in the day, and probably almost like 15 years ago, I was asked to make us a family meal, and for myself, I wanted to blow everyone’s family meal out of the water. And I was like, ‘All right, I’m gonna make a mole in one hour.’ I remember that day being so stressed out, like running back and forth trying to put all these things in a blender to make a mole in 30 minutes. Somehow, some way, I made something that was getting the respect of all of my peers and all of the cooks that I worked with, who at the time were all older than I was. And I was able to get their respect by showing off a piece of my culture that was authentic.
The teamwork
We get our front-of-house staff involved, and it’s kind of a big evolution, because in most restaurants I’ve always worked, it’s always just been the culinary team that does the family meal. So the fact that we get to throw some servers into the fire, I think it helps them also to kind of get a better understanding of what we do over here. It gives them a better picture of ‘Dang, you guys do all that in one hour?’ I think It gives a lot of our dining team just a way to kind of resonate with each other.
And most importantly … the food
My go-to is usually pasta of some sort. Pasta comes together very quickly, so sometimes if I’m in a rush, a really, really simple pesto or vodka sauce comes together for me in under 30 minutes. If not that, then a chicken congee that, I mean, you pretty much just overcook rice with a bunch of spices and ginger and chicken and add a bunch of chicken stock. And then once all that melts together, it’s pretty damn tasty. You just add in little crispy onions and a bunch of fresh scallions. You put in a bunch of toppings on the side for people to kind of top their own little bowl with, and you’re off to the races.
