Del Grande is familiar with the problem. His best supplier of Gulf red snapper gets more money for his fish in New York, where snapper is exotic, than he does in Houston, so we get very little here. But Del Grande hasn't hemmed himself in. "You can do whatever you want now, and nobody cares anymore," he says. "It's wide open. As long as the food can be fun. We used to worry if the food was elegant enough. Now we wonder if it's fun enough."
"Rare tuna salad with roasted beets and toasted pecans" is one of his most distinctive new dishes. It doesn't matter if the sashimi-grade tuna doesn't come from the Gulf. The pecans and a little minced serrano in the tuna tartare are the Southwestern accents, but they're subtle. "It ain't an enchilada," he jokes.
Daniel Kramer
Del Grande loves being behind the scenes, in the kitchen. "Back here I'm always relaxed," he says.
Daniel Kramer
Candice and Lonnie Schiller gave Del Grande his first restaurant job, in the kitchen of Cafe Annie.
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"There hasn't been anything like Cafe Annie or The Mansion on Turtle Creek in years," says Ron Ruggless. "It's mostly generalized New American cuisine these days. The consumer looks for something not so exclusively regional now. "
So why does Del Grande hang on to the Southwestern label? "I guess paternity is a pretty strong motivation," Ruggless says.
Did the timing of the Cafe Express sale have anything to do with Del Grande's health? "Not unless they weren't telling me something," he says in mock suspicion of his wife and in-laws. The timing of the lucrative deal may have just been a coincidence.
"I was trying to have a positive attitude, running every day, watching Rocky films," he says. "But there were always doubts. Sometimes things don't work out, and you have to be prepared for that, too."
And what about Ben Berryhill? The former Cafe Annie chef de cuisine didn't really want to start his own restaurant, Del Grande says. He wanted to be the chef at a new restaurant with his old mentor's backing.
If it hadn't been for the cancer, Del Grande would have opened a new restaurant with Berryhill, he admits. But he has no regrets. "It turned out for the best," he says. "Ben is happy and doing well. They are opening a restaurant outside of Charleston, South Carolina, close to his wife's family. His wife is ecstatic."
Of his cancer, he says, "It was a major distraction." But now that he has been given a clean bill of health, he's ready to put the whole thing behind him and join Lance Armstrong in the cancer-survivors-who-kick-ass club.
And by the way, Del Grande, who, despite the cancer, is extremely fit and a very young-looking 50, really does have a rock and roll band. It's called the Barbwires. He plays rhythm guitar, and Dean Fearing plays lead. The rest of the band is a rotating bunch of celebrity chefs and food writers who wish they were musicians. The Barbwires play their next gig at the Hill Country Food & Wine Festival in April. Turns out when he's got a guitar in his hand, Del Grande doesn't mind the spotlight after all.
