A culinary journey

David Garrido's new upscale taqueria rises from a passion for great food.

By Patrick Beach
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, June 24, 2009

After so many years in so many places, in bustling, swirling kitchens everywhere from Geneva, Switzerland, to Dallas, San Antonio and Austin, this is what it comes to: For the first time, at the foot of the 360 Condominiums at Third and Nueces streets downtown, a place with the man's name on it.

Garrido's.

It's not the first restaurant David Garrido, 48, has opened, but the stakes seem higher for the upscale taqueria that went live this month - "cosmopolitan but comfortable," as the former longtime executive chef at Jeffrey's puts it - because it's his name, his vision through and through. He is well-respected in Austin's culinary community and widely regarded as one of the best chefs in Texas. He has done as much as anybody - possibly more than you even know - to make Austin a better dining-out town. Talk to current and former colleagues and they'll tell you the man has an incredible palate and an indefatigable passion, and he says as much himself.

"Food is more important to me than anything," Garrido says. "Every meal."

And the food at Garrido's? Fresh and healthy. How about Gulf crab guacamole, Oaxacan black bean soup, mahi mahi tacos (a plate with rice and beans for $9.50), crispy pork carnitas and more. The space is a city-certified green building, and it feels like you're someplace besides across the street from the Austin Music Hall. There are palms outside and tables made from reclaimed Spanish cedar. It feels like an oasis.

A self described "Spanish Mexican" but very much a citizen of the world, Garrido didn't fool around all that much in the kitchen as a kid. He did make egg nog - with rum - when he was 12, but the experiment went a little too well.

"My mother said, `You can never make that again.' I had too much."

Nonetheless, he knew food was more than fuel; it was about life and family.

"The Mexican culture is about food," he says. "It becomes part of your life. Now everybody eats in the car or when they're trying to finish work. Nobody savors and experiences food."

While enrolled in a two-year hotel management program in Houston, he took an internship in Geneva, where he was put to work as a waiter. But he became friendly with the chef, and before long he was messing with food. People told him he had a talent for it. His first paying gig in 1974, for all of $3.25 an hour, was at Charley's 517 in Houston.

He couldn't afford culinary school, "so I bought as many cookbooks and magazines as I could find. And I worked two jobs because I figured I'd learn twice as fast."

Every night he read about food, about the chemistry of cream, and he wrote recipes. He left Charley's to open Polo's at the Fairmount Hotel in Houston, added Thai and French techniques to his repertoire in Dallas and San Antonio before training his eye on Austin.

"I looked in Texas Monthly for the best restaurant in Austin and it said Jeffrey's, so I called Ron," Garrido says.

That's not exactly how Jeffrey's co-owner and managing partner Ron Weiss remembers it. He says he got a call from Bruce Auden, one of the trailblazers in Southwestern cuisine who'd worked with Garrido at Polo's and Bigas in San Antonio as well as Charley's in Houston. "Bruce said, `I've got this guy who's working for me and he's really good. If you need anyone you should talk to him.' He may have had David call me."

And this is where things get interesting. Garrido's remembers the kitchen was, uh, a little on the small side. And by all accounts Garrido's energy was like a stiff, refreshing breeze.

"He made it very dynamic, very friendly, very social," says Weiss. "He got everyone excited about what he was doing. At some point after he was cooking here a while, Bruce and Stephan Pyles (another renowned chef with whom Garrido worked at Routh Street Café in Dallas) came up and had dinner one night, and I asked, `Is this Bruce's food or Stephan's food?' And they both said, `No, he does his own stuff.' Both of them said he was probably the best they'd ever worked with."

If Jeffrey's was pretty great before Garrido, it got even better. The menu was - and still is - eclectic and accessible. On any given night, you might have seen, for instance, George W. and Laura Bush having dinner with Trent Lott while a few steps away Garry Mauro was spelling his name for the hostess inside the front door, which Mauro likely wouldn't have had to do if Bush hadn't beaten him for governor in 1998. (That incident actually happened. I was there.)

And back in the kitchen, just as he'd apprenticed toque-to-toque with great chefs, Garrido became a teacher.

"Jeffrey's was always designed to be a training ground," he says. "My staff gives me their heart and soul, but I teach them everything I know. That's what I'm most proud of."

Says Robert Rhoades, now executive chef at Hudson's on the Bend and co-owner of Mighty Cone, who worked at Jeffrey's for 21/2 years before moving to Washington to run the now-shuttered Jeffrey's in the Watergate Hotel after the 2000 election:

"He taught me how to taste things three times to really saturate your palate and get a real true flavor. When I worked at Jeffrey's, we didn't repeat anything on the menu. If oysters were in one dish, they weren't in another dish. David has been my biggest mentor. He's an amazing chef."

And, as with many a chef - or any boss - despite his warm and generous nature, he could at times seem a little authoritarian in the kitchen. Goes with the territory.

"I've seen him have his moments," Rhoades allows. "I think he's mellowed out a bit in his old age. In the kitchen, as long as you show your passion and your love for food, it's OK."

And this echoes something Garrido says when talking about how he makes hires: "The most important thing is that they love food so they know why we're here. Experience can be taught. Attitude can never be changed."

He could also be generous. Before legendary University of Texas baseball coach Augie Garrido even moved to town, he booked a table at Jeffrey's. Garrido noted the same surname and presented the coach with a family coat of arms his father had given him. Coach Garrido still has it.

"If I have a hobby it's food," Augie Garrido said. "I consider him to be one of the best chefs in the country and he's a good friend. A restaurant operates like a baseball team. You can have the best chef and the best food, but if you have a server who's been there two months and is going to leave at three months, you're going to have a bad experience."

Back to the chronology: He wrote a cookbook, "Nuevo Tex-Mex," with food writer Robb Walsh in the late '90s. He opened Fresh Planet Cafe with Weiss on the second floor of the old Whole Foods Market and O's Campus Cafe at the University of Texas. He and Weiss opened the bistro Cipollina across the street from Jeffrey's around 1999.

"Restaurants are like girlfriends - some last and some don't," Garrido says. "The key is knowing when to get out of the relationship."

And then in early 2006, after 16 years at Jeffrey's, it was time to get out of that relationship. Garrido went to work for Mike Young and John Zapp, longtime Austin restaurateurs whose ventures include Chuy's and Hula Hut. It was time for the next move, and it was time for Alma Alcocer-Thomas to move up to executive chef. (Alcocer-Thomas herself left earlier this year - after 16 years, coincidentally - and is now at Fonda San Miguel.)

So what's he been doing? Not retired, he swears. He's been working with Young and Zapp on Garrido's. The three men are partners.

"It's still a work in progress," Young says. "It's not like we're doing another Chuy's. The paint's still wet on the canvas."

That is quite literally true during one visit. Garrido has to stop a visitor from touching an oil painting. Contractors and construction workers scurry around like purposeful bees.

The landscaping is going in at the partially covered patio overlooking the forlorn little dribble that these days is Shoal Creek. Construction began in February, but Garrido spent months earlier studying the site, seeing how bad the mosquitoes were, seeing where the sun hit and when. He had a tortilla machine built to his specifications "so I can have the best tortillas in town." He and his two partners spent a year and a half testing food and another six months matching food and wine. Beer and margaritas are fine, he says, but wine offers more variety - and the idea is to get people in more than once a week.

On the day of the wet paint, he's a few hours from a soft opening. After months of 15- or 16-hour days - he hasn't seen much of his family, except for 20-year-old son Alex, who works in the kitchen - it's almost showtime.

"I am stressed out but it really helps my staff if I stay calm," he allows. "Believe it or not, we'll be ready tonight."

And he is. Even if the space is still unfinished, David Garrido has a place of his own.

"Austin has been such a great place for me to grow with," he says. "I felt I needed to do something to give back to the city. It's easy to succeed if it's something you like doing."

If you go...

Garrido's is at 360 Nueces St. 320-8226,

www.garridosaustin.com. Hours are 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sundays though Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.