This interview with Sharif Villa Cruz, exec chef of Corner House and graduate of CMC’s Culinary Institute, was printed in Westword Magazine’s “Chef and Tell” section. By Lori Midson.
It’s a tradition in Mexico to “gather our families together for big meals, usually at our grandmother’s house,” says Sharif Villa Cruz. And Villa Cruz, today the executive chef at Corner House, spent much of his youth lingering in the kitchens of his kin, “cleaning dried hominy” for his grandmother’s posole and eating lots of butter — which his mother used instead of lard, much to the chagrin of other family members. “My mom never let us have soda, bad food or fast food,” he recalls. “She made dinner every night using fresh ingredients from the market, and she always cooked with butter, which everyone else thought was weird.”
But in Silverton, the Colorado mountain town where Villa Cruz moved when he was twelve, butter was prevalent in most kitchens, at home and in restaurants. And during a dinner at Keystone’s Ski Tip Lodge, Villa Cruz realized that butter had equally magical counterparts, ingredients that had “never looked so pretty on the plate.” That dinner, combined with a high-school shadowing day at the Ski Tip, convinced Villa Cruz that culinary school — and cooking — was his calling.
He enrolled in the culinary program at Colorado Mountain College, rotating through various Keystone restaurants, including Keystone click for full article