INTERVIEWED BY MJ PADILLA
We’ve know each other for a while now, but I’m going to start at the beginning for our readers. Chef Kelvino, where did you grow up?
I was born and raised in Honduras and by the age of 13 I moved to the states to be here in Charlottesville, Virginia. And I’ve been here since then, you know. I’m 31 years old now, so I’ve been here pretty much half of my life.
Certainly your whole adult life. When did you realize that you wanted to become a chef or when did the passion for food come about?
I grew up in a cooking lifestyle from my family. My mom was a chef, my grandmother was a chef. And I always used to help them in the kitchen, but at that time I didn’t know what I was going to do.
So when I moved to Charlottesville, I started working at Keswick Hall back in 2009. And then that’s when I kind of like, okay, this is good, this is what I want to do for my life. And I pursued more as a career than just a job. So, since Keswick is when I started.
Is that like ten years? Fifteen years now?
Yeah, 15 years now.
Did you start off as a line cook?
I started as a line cook, yeah. I started at the meat station, where I was in charge of the grill. And then I moved to the other stations and then I wanted a little more. So I started working breakfast and then brunch and then lunch and then I was doing the whole thing.
At one point there I was working all day long, like from four in the morning to 11 pm. Just because I wanted to learn.
So you didn’t go to a traditional cooking school, more like learning directly from the chefs? From dicing up an onion, learning how to do it the right way?
At the beginning I didn’t know what roasted garlic was, not even dijon mustard. So I had to, like, go on my phone and Google all those things. It was a really unique experience. At one point the chef asked me if I knew how to butcher steak. And I said yes, even though I didn’t know. So he got me butchering these 60 tenderloins. I said, “If you could show me once…just to refresh my memory.” And did one for me and I paid attention to it and then all of the sudden was just doing it.
And that’s how everything started.
What other restaurants? You mentioned Keswick.
From Keswick I went to Pippin Hill. I was at Pippin Hill from 2012 to 2016. Then I got into catering. I was there for a year and a half. Then I took over at The Shebeen. I was the chef there for three years. And then after that I went to The Bebedero.
Where we met—again!
After Bebedero, I was ready to be on my own and open up a truck. That’s when I ended up here and opened up South and Central.
What would you say is your favorite dish to cook and to eat?
Pasta.
Pasta? All time fave?
Yeah.
Me too. What is it about Honduran kids and pasta?
Because I mean, Honduras specifically, we eat a lot of flour, not corn. We eat a lot of baleadas, which are made with flour. And that’s mostly our diet, flour and fried green bananas. You know, like another dish called Pollo con Tajadas.
So when I started working at Pippin, I was working with this Italian chef. And she showed me how to make pasta, how to roll pasta, and I just fell in love with that. And since then, I perfected it my own way, my own technique.
And that’s what I like to do when I cook for myself, that’s what I love to do. And sometimes I like to do a little bit of a mixing up the restaurant and come up with some dishes based on that. And I also love to make gelato.
Really? I wouldn’t have pegged you as dessert person…
I mean, pastry is not my strongest. I can do some pastry, but… But gelatos are definitely fun. It’s a long process. It’s a hard process. If you do one step wrong, the whole process goes bad. It’s one of those things that I always love, the challenge of it, doing those things that are hard for everybody else, and making it look easy.
A while back you mentioned being in a cooking competition. Can you tell me about that?
That’s when I was at Red Pump. Red Pump, which is an extension of Pippin Hill.
So when I was at Pippin, I worked at a lot of other restaurants that were within the group. Red Pump was one of them. I was the sous chef there and I was in charge of making pastas. So I was making eight, ten different pastas a day, fresh for dinner service at night. And during this time, there was a competition going on here in Charlottesville, at the Tom-Tom Festival. They were inviting all the sous chefs from like six or five restaurants around the area. And they asked me if I wanted to do it. So I was like, yeah, sure. So we went in—it was in the market. It was 50 bucks to shop around the market.
So you had to shop for your own ingredients?
Yes, you shop for your own ingredients. It’s kind of like a shop type of thing. I was so nervous that I finished like 10 minutes before everybody else and I only spent 20 bucks– so I kept the other thirty. I went in I did my thing. The concept of that event was brunch so I did a brunch dish where it was an egg Benedict with this hickory syrup smoked pork chops and creamy leeks and spring onions—something like that—on a potato roll. It was pretty good, you know, they love it and they made me the winner.
You won?
Yeah, I won the award.
You’ve been in the news a bit, and you were even featured in Forbes, right?
Yeah, I was on Forbes when I opened the restaurant the first year. They came in, they were really impressed with the food scene here in Charlottesville. They decided to come to the Dairy Market because it was new at the time. And they came to the restaurant and I didn’t know who they were. They just sat at the chef’s table, I cooked for them.
So you didn’t realize it was Forbes, the Forbes?
So it was a writer from Forbes. They were doing an article about the Dairy Market. But she ended up having dinner here with me, she sat at the chef’s table. And you know, when people sit at the Chef’s Table, I always like to take care of them, give them the extra experience, like I always do. And then the following week, I got an email saying, hey, there’s an article about you in Forbes magazine. And I was like, oh, yeah.
You weren’t really expecting it at all.
No, but it was a pretty good thing, seeing that in one of those magazines. You know, it means a lot…
What was the concept for South and Central Latin Grill?
I always wanted to open my own restaurant and when the opportunity presented itself, I came here and it was nothing but four walls in gravel. They asked me, “What do you want to do,” and I’ve always been in love with fire and I wanted to do something with steaks. And something triggered me. What could we have in common across South and Central America and other Latin countries? We cook everything on wood fire because we don’t have the grills. Well, I mean we have the grills but they’re like wood grills, we cook with straight wood fire, because we don’t have the income to afford gas or none of those fancy things.
I remember when I was living with my grandma when I was young, she would cook everything over the wood fire. So I came up with the idea to do an open kitchen with a live wood fire grill and mix a little bit of a South American and bring all these ingredients. Instead of just setting up one concept, I made it multi-layered.
And with your [Honduran] influences too and the techniques you’ve learned here?
Stuff that I’ve been picking up through the years. Techniques and flavoring, and the food that I love to eat. So that’s how I came up with the idea.
What would you say is the trickiest or most difficult ingredient or dish to cook or make?
Ah, I mean, cooking is pretty simple, it doesn’t need to be complicated. But if there is a dish that is hard to make, it will be… You know, here’s the thing, that when I fail at something I just try it again but it’s mostly common sense, how to do things. I think the hardest thing to cook is steaks.
The thing about steaks is you have to be able to get the temperatures right. The fire has to be hot enough. The cut needs to be… Each cut is different, each muscle of the animal is different.
And so you have to be able to time it and take the time to cook it properly. Because a ribeye won’t cook at the same time as a New York strip. Yeah, so I think that would be the hardest thing to do on the daily. That’s one of the hardest things to do. It’s all about timing. I usually don’t use a thermometer. I use my fingers. And I use a mental timer every time. So that can be hard for some people.
What’s one thing that as a chef you wish people knew either about you or just about being a chef in general?
Chef life is not for everybody. You know, it’s a hard job. It’s stressful and it’s time consuming. It’s a lot of hours. But if you love that, you will definitely have the most fun you ever had. Because when you do something you love, that’s when you’re the most successful.
Do you have anything up in the works or any new things, food, dishes you’re working on?
I have som things in the works…I might start doing more catering when I open a sub kitchen. I have a lot of goals like anybody else, hopefully opening another restaurant–not in Charlottesville–but in the long run. We’ll see how that goes.
What do you think is missing from the Charlottesville food scene? What do you think there needs to be more of?
There’s a lot of diversity in Charlottesville. There’s a lot of great restaurants in Charlottesville. I don’t think it’s missing anything.
I think it’s missing Hooters.
Hooters!? [Laughs] Or Olive Garden?
I love Olive Garden…[laughs] I think [Charlottesville] is missing… I think this is everybody’s problem…everybody’s problem in the industry right now. It’s missing people willing to pay for being able to go to the restaurant and be able to afford it, because right now everything got so expensive. And a lot of people don’t see that. Customers don’t see that. A lot of restaurants go through financial trouble and sometimes they’re obligated to raise their prices. And it’s because labor is expensive, ingredients are expensive, rent is expensive. And all of the things that can go wrong with the restaurant. If something fails, something breaks down, you know, and that’s why a lot of restaurants are shutting down, unfortunately.
So we could all support these restaurants more that we all love because it’s hard times for everybody?
Yes exactly. I think just support, as a community, support all restaurants.
* MORE
How Dairy Market Is Bringing Diversity, Convenience, And Affordable Dining To Charlottesville, Forbes
Forbes magazine recognizes Dairy Market in Charlottesville for diverse, convenient dining experience, NBC 29 News
South and Central, Charlottesville 29
PHOTO CREDIT: JOHN ROBINSON FOR DO ME A FLAVOR
