Celebrity Chef Aarón Sánchez talks food, family, and culture in ‘El Toque de Aarón’

Absolutely, I find it rewarding. There have been restaurant remodeling shows, but what makes our series unique is that we bring the Latino sensibility, how we speak to people and being respectful. It’s about honoring their mission and what these owners have done and created. We’re not telling them, “This is no good.” Instead, we’re telling them there are opportunities to change and update the aesthetic.

That’s why we have Cris, a fantastic designer, and Ángel, the project manager, who can come in there and contemporize the aesthetic of the restaurants. Then I come in and add a dish, and I’ll say, “This is what works well.” I also do a deep dive into their menu and ask them, “Do you really need 40 items on the menu?” From a cost and business standpoint, you could be more profitable if you shorten your offerings. Things like that are present throughout the whole series. It’s really neat to see a grandmother working with her granddaughter. They’re all in this together, trying to figure out how to keep this beautiful legacy of their family restaurant going.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I speak to everybody the way that I want to be spoken to. And our culture is about respect first, honesty, and hard work, all of those principles that really define a Latino.

Sometimes it was challenging, but again, I have an impact fund where I put Latino kids through culinary school and restaurants and where I teach that the word chef means a teacher at the end. So I always ask questions, as opposed to dictating. I’ll give you an example: I will come to an owner and say, “Tell me, do you like how that wall looks? Do you think it needs maybe a little paint job?” I’m not telling them what to do. And then, together, we can find a solution through the question process.

Yeah. You know, Latinos are so damn stubborn, and we want to do everything for ourselves and don’t ask for help. The biggest lesson we showed them was, hey, I don’t necessarily have the chops to do construction. I need help; you need help; we all need help. The lesson was that I brought a team together, and we all collectively helped to improve things instead of putting all that stressful burden only on myself.

As Latinos, we are always about 15 seconds away from crying anywhere, myself included. A really big one was when we went to a beautiful ceviche place in Culver City, called CevicheStop. There, a young man that worked at this location with his family, was deeply moved when he saw the newly designed corner space with the restaurant’s new lights, diverse textures, and furnishings. Everyone, including the chef, the owners (Walther, his wife Diana), and the whole family, were in tears. Witnessing this emotional response had a big impact on me.

We also had great moments in a Venezuelan restaurant in Pasadena, Chamo, with the two “moms” who are key in the restaurant. The owner (Yesika) is a mom who worked hard to get her business going, is very passionate about her restaurant, and is proud of her Venezuelan heritage. Yesika’s mom, Perfecta, is the one who creates the recipes (her famous arepas!), and she also cooks there too. They both worked with us to incorporate Venezuelan culture into the remodeling. Things like having the logo and different Venezuelan phrases (chévere, rico, chamo, rumba) translated on the wall were challenging. Still, we knew it was done to teach and educate people about the culture through aesthetics and food.

Oh, that’s a good question. One we did at Chamo was really amazing. We brought in Mexican chorizo and infused those flavors into the sacred concept of arepas, which was really unique and delicious. And for the owners to be so open and willing to have this sort of fusion between Mexico and Venezuela, I just thought that was really cool. It’s like a beautiful combination of the two cultures.

This is an excellent example of one of the dishes we implemented that owners were excited about and will take off.

Exactly. Especially Mexican-style chorizo. It has different seasonings. We use dried chili, and it’s a raw preparation, not cured or salted. It’s a whole different ballgame. I found it amazing that everybody was all about it and was open to this mesh of cultures.