Chef Garza visiting Linz-Heritage-Angus Farm, where he sources beef for Carnivale.
Chef Carlos Garza of Carnivale in Chicago—which ranks within the top 10% of restaurants worldwide, as TripAdvisor 2020 Travelers’ Choice Winners—is a dedicated CASA mentor who finds a great sense of fulfillment by helping
CASA students gain the skills, techniques, and connections they need to launch their careers in food.
We recently caught up with the busy chef to talk concept and cuisine at Carnivale, hiring CASA grads, egos in the kitchen, and even a star student who’s left the police force to become a chef, so read on!
Chef Garza, what’s the concept behind Carnivale?
“The whole American continent, we take it from Mexico, all the way down to Argentina… including Havana, Cuba… Bolivia, Colombia, … Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico… including the Caribbean… and I can keep going on and on and on. Imagine the 27 countries that are connected to it. …
[It] opens the door for me to explore a lot of cultures… because food comes with culture…. Because it’s not just the food, what’s behind the food, the culture, the people, and the knowledge of them, and that’s what Carnivale represents. It’s a restaurant that brings the name of it, Carnivale, the celebration, but at the same time connecting and gathering all the cultures of South America, Central America, and the Caribbean.”
What’s your approach to mentoring CASA students at Carnivale?
“[I] work with them according with their personality and try to connect with them…. They have their personality, so I have just to make adjustments…. I teach them the roots of a kitchen, from top to the bottom, show them knife skills, which is important…. I always tell [them], your knife has got to be one of your best friends and you’ve got to treat them well, and you’ve got to learn how to use it.
There’s a lot of stories with every student, and it’s so cool to see how they’re growing and how they’re learning, and how they’re moving on in life.”
Learn more in our Straight Talk video featuring Chef Garza below!
You currently have a student who left the police force to become a chef. Please tell us about him.
“David Gualdron, he basically quit police department to become a chef…. His family was… like… ‘This is a job that as a mom, I’ve been a police [officer]. Your dad was a police, and that’s where we met, and we want you to be a police.’… He left that type of environment of becoming a policeman because… he was… like, ‘No, no, no, that’s not what I want for me. I want to do something different.’…
After he lost his dad, he was more connected to [him] through food, because his dad was the one that always cooked at home…. I already gave him a lot of cookbooks to read, to go through. I’m always connected with him, asking him questions, the way he’s feeling, knife practice, ingredients, cooking, prepping stations, working a station by himself, and it’s been quite a bit of a challenge, but it makes me feel great when I see the improvement of how he came in, and how great he is now. And he wants more, and he is hungry to do more.”
Carnivale in Chicago, a mentored externship location for CASA.
“I have a lot of them that I actually have… hired, and I have them working now in the kitchen, station-by-station… learning from prep, and then moving into one station, and then another station, to teach them how to treat ingredients, and then how to respect their station’s food.
And also, not just that, also to learn how to keep a kitchen clean, because no matter… how great you are as a cook… the kitchen has to be clean. And so, I teach them… that side too. After the shift, it’s like, ‘Okay, now we got to do a cleaning, team, and we have to clean the kitchen. And that’s what I want you guys to learn also, to keep your environment clean, to keep your stations clean, and your kitchen clean, because that’s what represents yourself, having a clean environment in a kitchen space.’”
What’s your take on egos in the professional kitchen environment?
“Basically, it doesn’t really exist in that side because when we start putting our ego in front of anything, things change…. It’s more about being respectful…. I always tried to connect with them and teach them that their ego has to be aside… even though they are really good cooks.
It’s more about working together…. You’ve got to make things right. You have to bring food [that’s] just amazing onto every single plate. And the ego doesn’t exist…. You can be the very good cook, but guess what, today we’re going to help the dishwasher because there’s no levels in the kitchen.
The grill guy, the pastry chef, the sous chef, myself, everyone is… as important as the dishwasher is… because without one of them, everything changes. So, there is no ego on that side, no I am better than you. You are beneath myself because I’m a cook and you’re a dishwasher. I’m a chef, you’re not. That doesn’t exist in my kitchen. Everyone has to be treated equally.”
Why do you choose to mentor for CASA?
“What I like about CASA is that they give the freedom to students to be face-to-face in a real kitchen…. They see the whole process of how everything works… and how they can take advantage of it, and how they can improve themselves by practicing. …
Being someone that can impact another’s life, it’s such a great gift…. [Being] someone that says, ‘You know what, I want to help this person to be better, and to teach them and show them that there’s opportunities in life and they can do it. I did it, they can do it as well. I will help them.’”
Learn more about
CASA’s 6-9 month culinary training and externships.
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