The chef at the Talking Stick Resort’s Orange Sky restaurant is breaking boundaries.
In Arizona, if you think about what lives here, what grows here, it’s squash, beans, and corn — the holy trinity,” says Ron Dimas, the chef de cuisine at the Talking Stick Resort’s fine-dining restaurant, Orange Sky, in Scottsdale, Arizona. “I work at a Native American casino, and I think it’s important to keep the traditions of the area alive. Cactus, mesquite flour — it’s not the lush landscape you’d have in Napa. But this is Sunbelt cooking.”
In 2013, Dimas took Best in Show at the Arizona Indian Gaming Association’s Chef’s Challenge for his Broken Arrow Ranch Venison Loin, which was served with a ragout of deer liver and heart, roasted butternut squash purée, and mesquite flour crepes. For him, it’s about technique more than trends.
“It’s harder now for chefs because the bar is much higher,” Dimas says. “A lot of diners are in the know. They want to see the things they’ve seen on Food Network and Bravo. Right now, the trend is all these wild foraged greens, and fermented stuff is super hot. Sure, I’m fascinated by the whole probiotics deal. I love fermenting and misos. It’s great to dabble in it, but at some point, you lose the beauty of food when it all becomes such hype. It’s not as personal when it’s that edgy — that’s not where food is for me. For me, it’s about flavor combinations and solid technique, and it’s about breaking down ethnic boundaries.”
So, how do you stay creative and continue to grow and change while also pleasing your discriminating guests?
“There are two different kinds of diners: The ‘don’t do anything weird to my food’ people, and the ‘do weird stuff to my food’ people. Chefs have to constantly walk that tightrope of being creative and pleasing themselves and serving guests what they find pleasing. The last thing I want to do is grill a rib-eye and call it done. We did these boneless wild boar baby back ribs with roasted acorn squash and we did an agave and Hatch chile chutney over it — that is what inspires me.”
For more information on the Talking Stick Resort and Orange Sky restaurant or to make reservations, visit www.talkingstickresort.com.
From the May/June 2015 issue.
