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Who is this guy, Ron Tanaka? Hard to tell. He won’t be pigeonholed. He runs from the camera. He’s not much on words. He regales himself in his work and exhibits a bashfulness that, at times, seems almost painful. And he prefers that his food do the talking for him. “Food has soul. I integrate this soul into the social encounter going on at the table.” |
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“No extraneous matter,” he exhorts and is quick to add that simplicity does not mean monotone, just the opposite. “Depth of flavors” is Tanaka’s culinary mantra and he looks globally across cultures to “mix a lot of flavors in different ways. Use anchovy to get the salt plus a depth of flavor that salt alone won’t give you.” Tanaka also explains that “honesty” does not equate to lack of invention. He sees his reign at New Heights as a shot at “more technique driven stuff, more fabrication of things.” He talks about glazes, rabbit stocks, the natural match up of pork and cabbage, and his chance to “finesse” the flavors of duck, an experiment that excited CityZen’s Exec Chef Eric Ziebold to rave about “the best duck confit I’ll have this year.” Chefing, what a surprise career path for a kid who took to dirt bikes, motorcycles and surfing Laguna Beach, and now a collector of extreme bicycles (continued) |
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