No Hesitations Restaurant Leadership Podcast : The show that teaches restaurant owners and operators how to be world class leaders without wasting time and energy.

16 : James Beard Award Winning Chef Janos Wilder on why Tucson is a Designated City of Gastronomy

December 25, 2023 No Hesitations Podcast
16 : James Beard Award Winning Chef Janos Wilder on why Tucson is a Designated City of Gastronomy
No Hesitations Restaurant Leadership Podcast : The show that teaches restaurant owners and operators how to be world class leaders without wasting time and energy.
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No Hesitations Restaurant Leadership Podcast : The show that teaches restaurant owners and operators how to be world class leaders without wasting time and energy.
16 : James Beard Award Winning Chef Janos Wilder on why Tucson is a Designated City of Gastronomy
Dec 25, 2023
No Hesitations Podcast

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Embark on a flavorful journey with us at the TenWest Festival, where Tucson's very own esteemed Janos Wilder, president of the City of Gastronomy, unravels the tapestry of local heritage and innovation at the table.

Join Nick and I as we traverse the impact of Tucson's UNESCO City of Gastronomy title.

Revel in stories of chef ambassadors taking regional tastes to the world stage, and how Tucson's agricultural legacy fuels a resurgence of pride in heritage foods.

Prepare your palate for a feast of knowledge as we uncover the art behind Tucson's culinary renaissance. With Janos's guidance, we explore the transformation of the iconic Chile Relleno and other local dishes that merge with international flavors, illustrating the culinary creativity that defines Tucson.

Our conversation doesn't stop at taste, as we spotlight the City of Gastronomy's role in championing sustainability, local sourcing, and ethical employee practices.

Discover how these efforts weave a sustainable future for Tucson’s gastronomy, ensuring the preservation and celebration of heritage foods for generations to come.

Venture with us into the intimate and exclusive world of Studio Janos, where Janos's passion for storytelling through food takes center stage. Each dish served is a narrative of local ingredients and culinary heritage, crafted in an experience that caters to a select few.

Tune in for a feast of culture, innovation, and the unyielding values that sustain Tucson's gastronomic identity.

More Resources

Learn more about The City of Gastronomy here

Audio today brought to by Cloud Microphones

Check out the TenWest Festival here

Get involved with StartUp Tucson here

More from Christin:

Curious about one-on-one coaching or leadership workshops? Click this link to schedule a 15 minute strategy session.

Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Click here to text me topics you'd like to hear about on the show

Embark on a flavorful journey with us at the TenWest Festival, where Tucson's very own esteemed Janos Wilder, president of the City of Gastronomy, unravels the tapestry of local heritage and innovation at the table.

Join Nick and I as we traverse the impact of Tucson's UNESCO City of Gastronomy title.

Revel in stories of chef ambassadors taking regional tastes to the world stage, and how Tucson's agricultural legacy fuels a resurgence of pride in heritage foods.

Prepare your palate for a feast of knowledge as we uncover the art behind Tucson's culinary renaissance. With Janos's guidance, we explore the transformation of the iconic Chile Relleno and other local dishes that merge with international flavors, illustrating the culinary creativity that defines Tucson.

Our conversation doesn't stop at taste, as we spotlight the City of Gastronomy's role in championing sustainability, local sourcing, and ethical employee practices.

Discover how these efforts weave a sustainable future for Tucson’s gastronomy, ensuring the preservation and celebration of heritage foods for generations to come.

Venture with us into the intimate and exclusive world of Studio Janos, where Janos's passion for storytelling through food takes center stage. Each dish served is a narrative of local ingredients and culinary heritage, crafted in an experience that caters to a select few.

Tune in for a feast of culture, innovation, and the unyielding values that sustain Tucson's gastronomic identity.

More Resources

Learn more about The City of Gastronomy here

Audio today brought to by Cloud Microphones

Check out the TenWest Festival here

Get involved with StartUp Tucson here

More from Christin:

Curious about one-on-one coaching or leadership workshops? Click this link to schedule a 15 minute strategy session.

Nick Spinelli:

Hello and welcome to the No Hesitations podcast. We are your co-hosts.

Christin Marvin:

Christin Marvin with Solutions by Christin.

Nick Spinelli:

And Nick Spinelli, that's me. Christin is the founder of Solutions by Christin, which partners with companies to accelerate their leadership development internally so they can increase retention and thrive.

Christin Marvin:

Topic is an outdoor educator exploring the indoor wilderness. Nick spent the first decade of his career making connections between people, between programs, between systems to build community resilience, and is on a mission to be a model for change.

Nick Spinelli:

That sounds good. We talk about all things leadership, successes, challenges and every topic in between, with the goal of helping you to become a better leader.

Christin Marvin:

Subscribe or follow and join the conversation each week on Spotify, apple or wherever you listen to your podcast, because there's no time like the present to listen in and level up.

Nick Spinelli:

Gosh, our audio sounds so good right now. This is a big moment for you and I, kristen Congrats. Folks, where are we today? What's happening? We are recording from the Ten West Festival in Tucson. What is Ten West, you ask Great question. Ten West was founded by Startup Tucson in 2015 and is hosted every November in downtown Tucson. The Ten West Impact Festival is a celebration of the growing innovation, creative and entrepreneurial ecosystems in Southern Arizona. Unique in its cross industry approach, 10 West showcases the connectivity between technology, entrepreneurship, creativity, culture and impact, uniting attendees to gain the knowledge and inspiration they need to innovate within their own careers and communities. You can hear people having a good time here right now. On the background, the week long event welcomes thousands of diverse attendees to participate in a multi-day conference, street fest, nightly events and numerous other partner opportunities and experiences.

Christin Marvin:

So, Christin.

Nick Spinelli:

What are we doing here today?

Christin Marvin:

How are we taking advantage? I was going to say this is awesome to be literally right in the middle of the event shooting a podcast, and we should mention that the reason why our audio sounds so good is because Cloud Microphones has set us up with this beautiful booth and all this amazing equipment. I need all of this at home. This is really, really cool. I love their retro microphones for sure, check your person. Don't blow my coat.

Nick Spinelli:

The security is absolutely going to check in with you before you leave.

Christin Marvin:

So I don't see any. So I think I'm in the clear. Today, Nick and I wanted to take this opportunity to talk to a local entrepreneur who has been making a cultural impact through his food business and community involvement Janos Wilder. Janos, thanks for being here with us today. Janos is an entrepreneur at least five times over in the Tucson community and is the president of Tucson's City of Gastronomy and the founder and owner of the new Studio Yanos, which we're going to talk about here in just a little bit. Welcome, Yanos. We're super excited to talk about your new project, Studio Yanos, and share with listeners a little bit about why Tucson was named a City of Gastronomy and discuss a little bit about what the organization is all about today and some of the amazing programs that they offer, because it is robust, for sure.

Janos Wilder:

Thanks so much. It's so great to be here. Thank you for letting me tell the story.

Christin Marvin:

Yeah, absolutely. In December of 2015, tucson became the first UNESCO City of Gastronomy designated in the United States joining the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. Tucson was selected because of the region's rich agricultural heritage, thriving food traditions and culinary distinctiveness. Tucson is well known for its Sonoran-style Mexican food, something Yanos proudly and creatively showcases in so many of his dishes. Yanos, will you tell us a little bit about what City of Gastronomy does, the programs it offers and how it's impacted the city and businesses in the community?

Janos Wilder:

Yeah, I think I'll go from sort of impact and then how we do it. So the impact has been really tremendous. I came to Tucson in 1983 or before then and started my first restaurant then and been cooking with heritage foods pretty much ever since. But there were not a lot of adapters, people were not using heritage foods they didn't really know about, and I think that with the designation now you see restaurants and chefs all around the city. You know, where do we get those Choya Buds? Where do we get that hot squash from? Where do we, how do I get Prickly Pear Syrup? How do I get Teppery Beans or White Sonoran Week Things that just have now started showing up on people's restaurants and menus in their restaurants but have been grown here in some cases for close to 5,000 years.

Janos Wilder:

They are part of our heritage and so that platform that city of gastronomy or getting that designation has given us has created a tremendous burst of pride within the community, within the food community, within the chef community and the community at large who really wants to try those things and understand why they're so special and, by inference, why they're so special because they live here. So Tucson, city of Gastronomy, in our work, tries to leverage that designation in a lot of different ways. We have several signature programs, one of them that's really cool and I'm very excited about. We realized very early on that being part of a global network of cities, global around the world that we get invitations from all over the world to come and send chefs there and we started doing that and but we realized this isn't going to stop. We need to actually train a cadre, a cohort of chefs, of chef ambassadors and it's one that's going to, that rotates and will be changing over every two or three years the ambassadors, who go through a really rigorous training on how to take it on the road, which is very different than cooking at home in your own restaurant, as controlled as you can possibly make it.

Janos Wilder:

When you go on the road, the controls go out the window. All the things that you thought you were going to have you don't have. Maybe your food got stopped at the border or they didn't. You know the guys you're working with didn't get the notes or the set ups completely different. So you have to really think and learn to think on your feet and be ready for change and to adapt to all sorts of situations. In your own restaurant at home. You don't necessarily do that. So we send chef ambassadors around the world to spread the word about Tucson. We send them carrying their Choy ablages and carrying their temporary beans and their dried chilies and all of the foods, the great foods that come from here and expressing through their culinary expertise, through their vision as chefs, what Tucson food is all about. So that program. Not only do we do that around the world, but those ambassadors work with us in Tucson to spread the word about the city of astronomy but, more importantly, what our culinary and gastronomic heritage is.

Christin Marvin:

Can I ask you a question real quick yeah we both had that same thought.

Nick Spinelli:

We were like yeah, I'm well.

Christin Marvin:

I have a few questions. Yeah, I'm curious how you discovered Heritage Foods. Were you out there foraging for them? Or did you find them because of a result of the city of gastronomy? Because you cook with Heritage Foods so often, in so many of the dishes that I've seen?

Janos Wilder:

Yeah.

Christin Marvin:

How did you first find them so?

Janos Wilder:

I came to Tucson directly. Before I moved to Tucson, my wife's from Nogales. That's how we end up here. I've been working in France, and working in France reinforced something that I'd learned prior to that, working in the mountains of Colorado that the best things to cook with were the things that were around you. Take all the recipes and techniques and put those aside. Great recipes, great techniques, I learned, but that was the core of truth that I took.

Janos Wilder:

We would go to the market every day and we would write our menu on the way. These were Michelin, two star restaurants, right, and best restaurants in the world. That's how it was done. The menu came from what was available and was available nearby. So when I came to Tucson, well, I didn't really know that anything was available nearby. So I started advertising for gardeners before I advertised for staff, and we started growing the things we wanted, and started from the restaurant, literally from the ground up, in that way. But I wanted to grow the things that cooked within France, right, not necessarily what had grown here, because I didn't think anything could ever grow here.

Nick Spinelli:

So true, a common misconception.

Janos Wilder:

Yes, absolutely. And when you're starting a restaurant and you're in the kitchen from six in the morning till midnight, you don't find out much. No, you don't see much growing. No, yeah, no. So a friend of mine who was on the board for Native Seed searchers and organizations started, the same year that we did, asked me if I would do a board dinner for them. I'd heard about the organization I knew a little bit, and so it really lit my curiosity. I said, ok, I'll do that, but I'm going to work with your products. And that's what that lit the fire under me. And from then it was deep dives into the heritage products and also what I began to call the cultural culinary icons, those dishes, iconic dishes from the region that really told the story of where we were. So that's how that all went.

Christin Marvin:

Well, you tempt our palate with one of those dishes that you were just speaking of.

Nick Spinelli:

Red in my mind.

Janos Wilder:

Yeah, so the first? Ok. So Chile Rellenos, for instance. Ok, so you get Chile Rellenos all over the place. And so I felt my job was to really not only understand what you could get at a restaurant, but what was that? The ideal and its ideal form? How do you roast the chilies to keep them green and they don't start falling apart? What do you put inside them? Does it have to be cheese? Can you do anything else? What kind of sauce might go with this? Does it have to be an enchilada sauce, or could it be something else? Well, remember I came it was coming from France First, chile Relleno. I haven't put on my menu was a lobster and brie, chile Rellenos on a French sauce. That you know all those French techniques that go into making that sauce. It takes hours and hours to make. That's the first, that's, and with a little jicama salad on the side.

Nick Spinelli:

This sounds like an iron chef dish, like something straight out of iron chef Japan. The French meets a Sonoran fusion.

Janos Wilder:

And we're still doing that today. Yeah, that sounds awesome.

Christin Marvin:

Yeah, I believe you have something like that in your cookbook.

Janos Wilder:

I do have that. I haven't attempted it yet, but I'll have to give it a shot. Yeah. So that's how that sort of got started for me, and so ever since it's deep and deeper dives into that. So now I work with all sorts of people who are much more knowledgeable than I am and say, for instance, I'm going to be writing my winter menu soon. What things can I be working with that I don't know about? So trying to figure that out and work those into my menus at the studio.

Christin Marvin:

Awesome, love it.

Janos Wilder:

So we were talking about what do we do? City of Estonia, ok, so the Ambassador Training one. Then we work with TenWest and with Forge to do heritage business, startup labs to get people who are interested in what the heritage foods are and how business ideas to help them bring those business ideas Young entrepreneurs, not necessarily, and in many cases startup businesses how do we get them involved in using heritage food so we can really grow that industry, really that food business that really specializes in our heritage foods? And it's essential to us because if those heritage foods are going to live into the future, they have to be used and so we have to grow more of them. So that would be another one of our really signature programs. Another one is the Pueblo's Del Maís Festival, which was in its second or third year last year, where we partner with other cities of gastronomy from the region and Merida, mexico, san Antonio and Pueblo or the other cities, and it's a festival that lasts a month. It goes from one city to the next. Not necessarily do we go on the road and take it, but we'll do it one weekend in Tucson, then the next weekend in Merida, and then Pueblo and then San Antonio, all of them expressing through their eyes, through their prism of where they live, what corn does and how to use corn. And we're really proud of that festival because it's grown tremendously and it really involves so much of Tucson. It's not just chefs, it's communities getting involved and showing off the things that they do. We had a big the last year at Culminator and the Denny Kennedy Park, which is out of this world, really enlivened that park with food booths and music and brought the whole community together. It was really cool.

Janos Wilder:

Food Heroes Award. So we really want to acknowledge our heritage foods and who are the practitioners who really have been spending their time and working with the heritage foods and really bringing that to the forefront. And also the Visionary Award. How does that? Who are the people who move that into the future? So we're working folks to award those. And then our Certification Program. We certify restaurants as Tucson City of Astronomy Restaurants and it's an aspirational process. Not everyone that applies for that process is going to get that certification. So we're not in the business of being food critics. We're not telling you who has our favorite restaurants. We're telling you who are the leaders in the industry, whose practices are leadership practices. So who uses heritage foods, who uses local foods, who uses local vendors? Everybody has to be local. Everything has to be locally owned. You can't be a chain and get that. Who is paid above minimum wage, who's taking good care of their employees, who has sustainable practice, doesn't waste a lot of water. In addition.

Nick Spinelli:

It's a restaurant calling you right now, Janos. We want to be certified. How do we do it?

Janos Wilder:

It's mostly the restaurant wife that's calling you right now. We're just going to say that, sorry about that. So we want the restaurants that are certified to be model businesses and we want it to be aspirational. So one year they say well, we really need to do it. We didn't get the certification. We need to do more recycling, we need to do more with water conservation or composting or where we got up, how we're taking care of our staff. Then they will do those things and come back to us the next year.

Christin Marvin:

Love that and I just want to throw in at TCOG, we don't just certify restaurants, right.

Janos Wilder:

We certify retailers caterers artisans.

Christin Marvin:

So, it's going beyond the reach of just restaurants and food trucks too.

Janos Wilder:

So yes, and we'll be expanding that as well. Great, we start out small. Prove of concept, get proof of concept, and then you can move on.

Nick Spinelli:

Yeah, I had a question in there a little earlier on and I think we can actually circle back to it as an example. So you, when we were talking about heritage foods, you mentioned a dish, chili rellenos. You also mentioned peppery beans a couple of times and I think, for listeners, even if this is just a 30 second side bar, I think it would be really good just to put a few words around that. What makes the peppery bean so special? And then B why is that such a big deal in the heritage food space?

Janos Wilder:

I'm not sure I can do an A and B in 30 seconds. That's OK, you can have a little bit more time, you can have a little bit more time than that if you want.

Nick Spinelli:

That was my introduction to heritage food in Tucson. I should have mentioned that earlier, when I first got here. Peppery beans were really the gateway for me into both understanding a lot of the Native American and indigenous activism that's taking place in this place with the tonal at them, but then also heritage foods generally.

Janos Wilder:

So the thing about heritage foods we live in a place that's so dry and so arid that everything that comes out of the ground has to fight and scramble to survive, and so particularly they have to be really adapted to an arid climate. So peppery beans take very little water so they can grow in a very arid climate. They're high in protein. They can go dormant and come back. So in really bad years you might not have a good year, but that doesn't mean they won't come back the next year. They're very small. They're very small beans so they work in all sorts of ways. They take a while to cook because they're so dry, so we kind of use the water at the other end. But they're a delicious bean that really can go on a bunch of recipes and they really are one of the great foods for a lot of people.

Nick Spinelli:

Great.

Janos Wilder:

So that and it's one of the beans, that is, that farmers have taken it, they're taking it to sort of rowing more and more of that. So it's not. There's not such a rarity and scarcity.

Nick Spinelli:

Right and so, from a climate change standpoint, or rather a climate resiliency standpoint, that's another reason to love those beans is because, as we shift to a more arid climate or rainfall becomes more unpredictable, any of these things right, we can grow those.

Janos Wilder:

Yeah, and that's one of the things that I'm glad you mentioned that because we have here the key to the future from an agricultural standpoint. We have seeds that grow in arid climates and climates with so much more of a role is going to be experiencing and they can use our seeds to do that, and so that's really an important piece. Yes, it's part of the resiliency of this area has, because we've fought so long not as personal, but all those little seeds that are in the ground and scrambling to get above ground. They fought for so long. They could be the answer elsewhere.

Christin Marvin:

I was going to ask how can we protect heritage foods? How do we ensure that they are staying around? How do we? You mentioned earlier that we have to make sure that we're constantly growing them and that there's demand for them. What else do we need to do?

Janos Wilder:

I think that there's a tension there, right? So on the one hand, we have to continue to popularize them, because that's going to provide jobs for people who want to go out and grow those products. I think that's the biggest piece is put them on our menus, have them in our stores, make them popular so that they never go away because they're always in demand, and that starts a sort of virtuous circle that gives people jobs and really influences the economy, their resilience, all the other things that we want to have happen happens in that way, and that's very much part of what City of Astronomy is all about and one of the sort of benefits of getting that designation. So we can really start those programs because people begin to know more about them and demand those sorts of products. That's the goal.

Christin Marvin:

So when a restaurant or a business comes to you and says comes to TCOG, and says I want to be certified, I don't cook a lot with heritage foods, where can I find them? What do you tell them?

Janos Wilder:

So there's a lot of places they can find them. So depending on what you want. Mission Gardens is a great example of that. I go to Mission Gardens to get my Pana Atam hot squash. I get my pomegranates that came from the red stock that Father Kino brought over here. I get all sorts of things that change season by season as to what they're growing. Those things show up on my menus and they'll show up on menus around the town. We can get Cholla Buds from San Javier Co-op Farms and other items that they'll harvest or that they'll grow there I mean the wild harvesters or they're growing there. You can go to Native Seed Search and get lots of different varieties of beans through them, so there are sources out there for them. You can go to Sherry's Desert Harvest to get prickly pear juice and prickly pear syrup. She has. I don't know if there's a bigger plot. I've never heard of a bigger plot of cultivated and harvested and harvested prickly pears than she has, and she's doing thousands and thousands and thousands of thousands of that every year.

Christin Marvin:

It's so. I moved here a year ago and prickly pear is all the rage. I just went around the corner where they have local teas being served and out of the four varieties of prickly pear is gone. It's in my girlfriend's forages, who's a private chef. She forages for prickly pear all the time, just in neighborhoods. It's incredible.

Janos Wilder:

I think I told you that my dream was always to be arrested gathering foraging for prickly pears on property I shouldn't be on.

Christin Marvin:

We could probably make that happen.

Nick Spinelli:

I mean there's still time, right yeah?

Janos Wilder:

there's still a chance, right yeah, when I was. You know, we're just starting off saying I got it. I just I'm going to go over there and get that. I need that.

Christin Marvin:

You come over. You come over to my house. I'll call the cops.

Nick Spinelli:

That is going to say that's Janos's risqué fantasy is getting me arrested for prickly pear.

Christin Marvin:

The heritage foods fantasy. Proud of you, I love that.

Janos Wilder:

I would drive around with five gallon buckets in the back of my car and tongs.

Nick Spinelli:

Only a chef Tell me about the most controversial thing you've ever done. Well, this one time I was in someone's yard in my neighborhood and I saw a plant that I liked and I took it.

Christin Marvin:

I mean forging for prickly pears, dangerous, right?

Nick Spinelli:

I mean yeah, you should wear gloves, be safe.

Christin Marvin:

Grab some tongs. Make sure you know who's land you're on, et cetera. Will you tell us a little bit about this new project, Studio Janos, and the role that Heritage Foods is playing in that?

Janos Wilder:

Yeah, so Studio Janos is like the smallest and most personal thing that I've ever done. I've failed retirement as. I told you and realized that I didn't have a hobby. I tried golfing but didn't walk ruined.

Nick Spinelli:

Hi, omio Zaki is on the phone. He has a word with you about failing retirement. He's done it twice now, yes, and I don't think he's going to retire again, and he's 83, I think 84?.

Janos Wilder:

He's film director. I think that's a really good role for me.

Nick Spinelli:

Yeah, give him a call. I bet he'd love to talk.

Janos Wilder:

So I decided to pair everything down to the essence of what I wanted to do the most, what I love the most, which was cooking. The food is all about the food and cooking for small groups and having a really intimate interaction with my guests. So we have 12 seats. I do the seasonal menu and the seasonal menu is based on the heritage. What's the seasonal food? The heritage foods they're in season at the time, so right now, apples from Wilcox to Anothem Hot Squash. Obviously it's green corn tamale season, so it's based on that, the mole's, and they come at this time of year. So those are the underpinnings for the menu and that's the whole idea behind it.

Christin Marvin:

And you're doing some cooking classes as well at Studio Janos, or you will, I've got one tonight.

Janos Wilder:

Awesome, cool, yeah, so I'll do some cooking classes. And the way that Studio Yanos works is you can't call up and get a reservation for two. We have 12 seats. You can book up to 12 people into it and that's how we sell the space. So we sell the space. That's really how I wanted the cooking classes and how we've done all the day Crazy busy for the first five Way beyond my expectations.

Christin Marvin:

And are the guests picking the menu, or are you writing it for them and saying sit back and enjoy.

Janos Wilder:

Pretty much the latter and any changer that they want. If they don't eat one of the proteins or something that they object to or they have dietary restrictions, whatever, that's really easy to work around. But my goal is to showcase the heritage foods so I'm not quite as excited about. Oh, make us a French dinner? Well, there's others who can do that for you. I want to show, I want them to take pride in where they live and to tell everybody about it.

Christin Marvin:

Well, and I think being able to be a part of Studio Janos has been absolutely incredible. One of the most amazing parts of it is listening to you tell every single story about every single food, whether you're getting the lamb from a local 4-H club, which is amazing and adorable, to just where you're sourcing everything and the story behind it. It really just brings the dish to life and it just makes it so unique and it's an experience that you can't get anywhere else and people love you and they love your food and they love the idea and the concept. But it's just so intimate and it's so unique and it's just beautiful, so full disclosure.

Janos Wilder:

So they love you too, and you had. So Christin has worked for me there. This woman has unbelievable experience in the restaurant business.

Nick Spinelli:

So you can tap her for anything she does.

Janos Wilder:

So she's worked as a server, and you worked in the kitchen with me one night that was the most terrifying experience of my life.

Nick Spinelli:

That's really saying something coming from you.

Christin Marvin:

My husband said to me. I said Janos wants me to help him in the kitchen. I've never worked next to James Beard chef, more running chef twice over in the kitchen and I was terrified. You know, I didn't know the space, I didn't know the equipment. I'm not really confident when it comes to my cooking skills. I'm the sous chef at home. I meal prep, I grocery shop, I chop everything and then Tyler says get out of the kitchen. I'm going to put everything together. When I told Tyler Janos wanted me to come help in the kitchen, his first words to me were do you want me to come with you and wait in the car in case you need my help?

Janos Wilder:

Uh-huh.

Christin Marvin:

So I said yes.

Janos Wilder:

And I never saw him that evening. You didn't need any help.

Nick Spinelli:

And it sounds like you'll be back again.

Christin Marvin:

Now I've got the bug. Ok, that's good. Yeah, it's good.

Janos Wilder:

OK, I've got a schedule here. Thanks, Tyler.

Christin Marvin:

I love it. Anything else that we want to take this time to highlight on about teacog.

Nick Spinelli:

This is more of a nuts and bolts thing, but you know you're hiring right now, aren't you? Or looking for help in the kitchen?

Janos Wilder:

Yeah, so kind of. So I do all of the cooking, all of the puffing All the things.

Janos Wilder:

That piece to me, that's the front. When I'm in the kitchen by myself during the course of the week, before reading up to these dinners, I've got my music on and I'm in the element, but I can't do it myself. So the night of an event, we're cooking for 12 people, there'll be four of us and there'll be two servers and I'll have somebody else in the kitchen with me as well, because it's really a very high touch, intimate, intimate experience. And so I am yes, I am. I'm looking to fill out my roster of cooks and servers who want to work in that sort of environment, who have other jobs and maybe they have a night or two here or there that they're available and have come with great experience and great passion and want to be able to experience something that's way out of most people's most people's realm of experience in the restaurant world. It's the best piece of the restaurant world, it's the best piece of service, it's the best piece of the interaction with your guests that any of us really have Good to have.

Christin Marvin:

Yeah, it's very true.

Janos Wilder:

So yes, I am.

Nick Spinelli:

Okay, good to know.

Janos Wilder:

Janos@ downtownkitchencom.

Nick Spinelli:

I mean you should go for it. This is the chance, right? What else? Christin?

Christin Marvin:

I think we covered a lot of groundwork today. Anything else you want to touch on, Janos?

Janos Wilder:

Yeah, so I think that we talked about the signature programs in City of Gastronomy, but I think it's also important to talk about our value system. Okay, because the signature programs are the things that we put into action, right, but the values are the underpinnings, the philosophical and ethical underpinnings of the Monteguin. I think that's really important when we talk about that. So one we want to recognize the diversity and interaction within the whole food heritage community. So it's very diverse and Tucson is such a diverse community and all of that is expressed within the Tucson City of Gastronomy and we want to give all of that voice. We want to acknowledge and to respect the knowledge keepers and the products that they've created or grown in the traditional foods that are here. It's not about the chefs like me that come along and are able to use the, the fruits of their work. It's to acknowledge and respect those who did the hard work for generations, generations before that. We want to have provide equity in distributing the benefits of the designation. So there's a lot of things that come with that designation that should bring value to the entire community, all portions of the community, and that's very important to us that we don't get pigeonholed or pigeonholed up or pigeonholed others Support.

Janos Wilder:

We can't do everything. We're a small organization. We have one salary employee, that's it. It's all. It's all board work and we can't do everything. So we want to support the advocates in the community that do the sort of work that's important to us. We can support them in ways without doing their work, and that's an important piece of spreading the word and we want to really create and extend and amplify the vision for a more sustainable food system. So that's sort of a value system.

Christin Marvin:

That's great. So if any chefs, restaurateurs, artisans, caterers, food trucks, if anybody retailers that they're interested in learning more about City of Gastronomy, go to the website. All the information is there. The certification is open all year round, so you don't have to wait for a specific time period and, again, if you're not ready to be certified, like Janos said, they're going to give you advice on what you need to do to come back, which is amazing. You mentioned the series of heritage foods Earlier. That is just a really awesome program and this year we are hosting that at Forge every second Thursday from 9 to 10. It's beautiful this year because it's a chef partnering up with a food vendor and actually cooking and showcasing those heritage ingredients, which is awesome.

Janos Wilder:

That is awesome. So the stuff happening at Forge we're at Ten West right now, so the stuff that's going on there is unbelievable and they are wonderful collaborators with us. We're proud of that relationship and that they think highly enough of us to collaborate with us.

Christin Marvin:

Awesome. Thank you so much. We really appreciate you being here and sharing all your knowledge, and I think, if there's nothing else, we can go on with our day. Go check out some more of these events at Ten West I think we could take it home, folks.

Nick Spinelli:

So subscribe and listen in each week on Spotify, Apple Podcast or wherever you find your podcast, and be sure to follow Christin Marvin and Nick Spinelli on LinkedIn and subscribe to the Solutions by Christin Newsletter. This was the no Hesitations podcast. I hope we sound this good again soon. We'll see you next week, folks.

Christin Marvin:

Thanks everybody. Thank you, Janos. Bye.

Exploring Tucson's City of Gastronomy
Tucson's Heritage Foods and Culinary Programs
Preserving Heritage Foods and Sustainability
Studio Janos

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