Meet the Chef: Richard Huarte
Chef Richard Huarte admits he couldn’t boil an egg until he was 30.
While working at a successful career in the corporate world and training executives on language and culture on Fifth Avenue, Huarte had a love of food, but not a love of cooking.
That would all change when he suddenly started cooking for himself. He already had what he considers to be a sophisticated palate, developed by his Italian and Spanish heritage. “Very few kids are eating tripe at age 6,” he said. “I always ate great food, even as a kid.”
And his interest in other cultures, an outgrowth of his international corporate work, left him wanting to experience those cultural differences through cooking. What began as a hobby – reading cookbooks on the train and racing for the Wednesday food section of the New York Times – led him to enroll in culinary school and ultimately heading the kitchen at the Blue Rooster as executive chef.
After discovering the Blue Rooster through a chef’s online networking site, Huarte said he soon realized the downtown café was precisely the kind of kitchen he wanted to lead. “This place is all about the things that matter to me – the Slow Food movement, cooking from scratch, organic when possible and most of all real food,” Huarte said. When he was sent home from his interview at the Blue Rooster with a baguette, he said he knew he had found a new home for his skills.
The chef, who spent six years cooking at Tre Piani and Tre Bar in Princeton, said his vision fits perfectly with Karen and Bob Finigan, owners of the Blue Rooster. Describing the café menu as “upscale comfort food,” he said he aims to bring depth to the dishes on the Blue Rooster menu and delights in coming to work, looking at what is on hand and challenging himself to see what can be produced. That style of cooking, traditional in Italy and France, insures that fresh ingredients dictate the menu, he said.
And just as Bob Finigan approaches his bread baking, Huarte said simplicity and freshness will always win out over simply “dressing up a dish.”
“I’m not into making complicated dishes. I’m into really, really good ingredients,” Huarte said. “When you cook like that, the customer should be able to discern everything that is in a dish.”
Huarte said he looks forward to developing special “chef’s menu” nights when patrons sample a variety of dishes offered by him without any set menu.
Yet Huarte acknowledges that customers of the Blue Rooster continue to keep coming back for reasons in addition to the quality of the food. “It is about conviviality. We are marrying the food experience with the atmosphere,” he said. “And that is a beautiful way to eat.”
