Ysaac Ramirez will be the featured chef at the upcoming Etowah dinner, which will be held September 16th at The Commonwealth.
Etowah, hosted by Josh Conley and Cole Jeanes, features dinners four times a year and brings top chefs from around the country.
A former Memphian, Ramirez, 43, now lives in Palm Springs, California, where he is corporate chef for Drift Hotels.
His Etowah dinner will include five courses. “This menu I created is going to be blending a lot of Latin flavors and Southern cuisine,” Ramirez says.
Coloradito, one of the main entrees, is “a dish my mom used to make when we were kids.”
But Ramirez, who describes his ongoing kitchen style as being “in the kitchen of Mexican and Latin cuisine,” likes to add a Southern touch. He’s incorporating grits in the pork, tomato, and chili sauce dish. “You get this creamy tortilla-like flavor.”
Born in Colorado, Ramirez spent most of his childhood in California before moving to Memphis at 13.
Ramirez, whose dad is Mexican, says his mother learned to cook Mexican food from his grandmother. “My parents got married at a young age. [My dad] was drafted to Vietnam. And my mom lived with my grandmother for two years while he was in Vietnam. She’s learning how to cook everything Mexican. Everything that my grandmother used to do.”
Ramirez and his family ate “fresh flour homemade tortillas” every day. “My mom, every Christmas, would make tamales. A process that takes forever.”
Ramirez didn’t initially want to be a chef. “I did spend some time in the kitchen with my mom, but it wasn’t really an aspiration of mine at that young of an age. I’d help my mom. More just so we can eat faster, I guess. Also, I didn’t find it a chore or anything. I did find it interesting, but I didn’t think at that age it would be my career.”
Ramirez expressed his creativity through art. “It was painting. Surrealism. A lot of abstract painting. Landscapes as well. I mixed in mostly surreal and abstract.”
His plan was to go to Memphis College of Art. “I thought about it and I was like, ‘I don’t want to be a starving artist the rest of my life.’ Pretty ironic. Then I was a struggling cook for a long time.”
Before he got into cooking at age 26, Ramirez was a property accountant at Trammell Crow Co., which later was bought by CB Richard Ellis. But after being an accountant for six years, Ramirez thought, “I do not want to do this the rest of my life.”
He decided to trade his “slacks and button downs” for a chef’s jacket.
Ramirez began working at Interim while he was studying at L’Ecole Culinaire. “I left a pretty good job for making $8 an hour making salads. That’s a hard pill to swallow. But it was something that I really wanted to do at that time. Everything was piquing my interest in culinary.”
His restaurant jobs included working at Hog & Hominy, the old Gray Canary, and other restaurants owned by Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman.
But everywhere he worked was a place Ramirez knew would further his career. “Everything had to make sense and serve a purpose for me growing and excelling as a chef. I think it speaks volumes to where I am right now. A lot of kids now are thinking, ‘Who’s going to get paid the highest,’ but not looking toward the future and seeing how that job will benefit them. I toughed it out for a long time. The choices I was going to make were going to pay off down the road.”
After moving to various restaurants around the country and even opening his own “barbecue Latin-infused concept” pop-up called “porc” out of his house, Ramirez began working as executive chef at Maleza at a Drift Hotel in Palm Springs. “I recently moved into a corporate chef role overseeing different operations for projects for Drift Hotels.”
He agreed to be the chef at the upcoming Etowah dinner after Conley reached out to him. “I was like, ‘Yeah. It makes sense. I haven’t been to Memphis in quite some time.’ And I can sort of bring a different element to dining that Memphians aren’t quite used to yet.”
Go to etowahdinnerseries.com to sign up for the upcoming Etowah dinner.