Some people come to food writing from culinary school or restaurant kitchens. I came to it the way many Nevadans come to most things — with curiosity, and without apology.
But if I'm honest, it started one Christmas in Los Angeles. My late father took our family to a restaurant called Citrus. At the time, it was “The” place and way above our pay grade. As a kid from a Mexican-American family nothing in my life to that night prepared me for what we walked into. The ceilings soared. The lights twinkled. At the entrance stood a Christmas tree made entirely of poinsettia. And there was the kitchen — open, visible, alive. Something I had never seen before. The stemware caught the light in a way I couldn't explain but couldn't stop looking at. Glasses clinking. Conversations humming. The whole room felt like it was breathing.
After the meal, the chef came to our table. His name was Michel Richard. He spoke with a beautiful French accent and wore crisp chef's whites. He wanted to know what we thought. What we thought. I was a kid who had never been anywhere like this, and I was completely overcome. I have never forgotten that room, that meal or that moment.
I didn't know then that Citrus was the most celebrated restaurant in Los Angeles. I didn't know that Michel Richard would go on to win the James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef. I just knew that something had happened to me that I couldn't name yet. It opened my eyes to what a meal could be — and from that moment on, even when I was young and just getting by, I made the time and spent the money to find out.
WhereRenoEats exists because every table has a story worth telling.
Spago. Stars. Zuni Cafe. Charlie Trotter's. Lespinasse in New York. The obsession grew. Eventually it led me to Michelin stars — first one, then two, then three. It is my lifelong goal to dine at every three-starred restaurant in the world and I've reached 40 and counting. Along the way I've been fortunate enough to meet and get to know some of the most extraordinary people in food — Chef John Shields at Smyth, the incomparable Carl Frosterud at Frantzén, Kyle and Katina Connaughton at SingleThread, Chris Gerber working the room at Esmé in Chicago. Sean Brock waxing poetic about the wonders of Southern Ham and heirloom beans.
A conversation I had with Chef Massimo Bottura — at his own villa, over a lunch he made us himself — about whether food is art. His answer surprised me: he's an artisan, he said, not an artist. No matter what he creates, it still has to be delicious. It still has to please the people who ordered it. I've thought about that ever since.
Bobby Stuckey, Master Sommelier and co-founder of Frasca Food and Wine in Boulder, compliments other restaurants freely and genuinely — a rare and telling quality in someone at his level. He embodies what he calls enlightened hospitality — the belief that every gesture at the table should make the guest feel seen. In a world of egos, he remains one of the most gracious people I've encountered anywhere.
And then there's Emma Risa of Da Emma in Montreal — the grande dame of Italian cooking in Quebec, nearly 90 years old and barely 4'6", who stands on a wooden stool to see into her pots of sauce. She handed me the oar and had me stir while she muttered something in Italian I couldn't understand. I didn't need to. I understood.
Derek Dickinson of the long-lost Dickinson West in Pasadena was another kind of master entirely. Always perfectly dressed. Manners impeccable. I witnessed scenes in that dining room over the years that would have undone a lesser host — he handled every one with consummate grace. Unflappable is the word. There are very few people like that left in hospitality, and fewer still who make you feel, every single time, that your table is the only one in the room.
But here is what I've learned after all of it: it's never really about the place. It's always the person. It's always how they got to where they are and what they're trying to say through their food and in their space.
That's as true at Ruth Ibarra's taco truck here in Reno as it is at the French Laundry in Napa. Ruth is an expat from Guadalajara who works full-time as a housekeeper and on weekends runs the most remarkable taco operation in all of Reno-Tahoe. Her story is as rich and as worthy as anything happening in a Michelin kitchen.
I try to take as much away from those tables as I do from any glossy three-star dinner.
The curiosity is the same.
The wonder is the same.
The respect is the same.
Years later I encountered Chef Richard once more, at a restaurant called Napa in Las Vegas. I introduced myself, and told him what that Christmas dinner had meant to me and I thanked him. I'm not sure I was able to convey what that thank you actually meant — that a Christmas dinner in Los Angeles had opened my eyes to the world in ways I was still discovering. Some things are too large for a moment like that.
Twenty years now of writing about this region — the Reno News & Review, Edible Reno Tahoe, Nevada Magazine — and the search never gets old. The perfect glass of Pinot Noir is still out there. Perhaps a dish you didn't see coming. A story worth telling.
Come with me.