|
 PAUL CANALES
Chef Paul Canales has been Executive Chef of Oliveto since the summer of 2004. Before that, he'd been Oliveto's Chef de Cuisine under Executive Chef Paul Bertolli, after rising rapidly from his first experience at Oliveto in the 90s as an extern from the Culinary Institute of America.
Paul's story is quite extraordinary. He was a high-level Pacific Bell executive, wanted/needed to change his life, broke free to become a cook, then enrolled at the Culinary Institute in Hyde Park, New York.
He is exceptional. He grew up in Fresno of Spanish heritage (the son of a professor), was an honors student, student leader, athlete, Congressional intern, and musician.
Paul has traveled in much of Italy and has developed a deep knowledge of its foods. He has an unusually accurate memory for flavors, and the uncanny ability and skill to understand by which cooking methods and with what ingredients those flavors can be reproduced.
As Chef of Oliveto, he has pursued many large projects. For example, he established a relationship with Mac Magruder, a superb cattle rancher in Mendocino County who supplies Oliveto with grass-fed beef of various ages. That allows Paul to cook beef dishes as they do in Italy-from milk-fed animals to young vitellone to mature manzo-using meat with different flavors and cooking characteristics. Paul learned the science of whole beef butchery and ageing by consulting with a meat technologist at Fresno State University.
Chef Canales has traveled throughout Italy, exploring diverse methods of cookery and ingredients unknown to many Americans. He seized an opportunity to travel to Japan to enrich his understanding of the characteristics of many fish and the philosophy the Japanese bring to cooking (which, remarkably, overlaps to a great extent with Italian philosophy).
Chef Canales is a remarkable leader in the Oliveto kitchen, developing in the past few years a group of talented and dedicated chefs and cooks. No drama, and no cutting corners, with plenty of good cheer and collaboration.
The comments we hear most often from our customers in recent years is that our food keeps getting better and better, thanks to Chef Canales, his singular talent and dedication, and his talented staff.
|
