In The Show's Chef Talk series, we sit down with a chef each month — from fine dining rooms to nightclub kitchens — and find out what makes them tick.
Meet Doug Robson, the mind behind Gallo Blanco and Otro Cafe. His newest restaurant is Tesota in The Newton in midtown Phoenix.
Robson joined The Show to discuss his career in the kitchen, which started very young.
DOUG ROBSON: I, I'm one of those kids who's super hyperactive, a lot of learning disabilities, always got into trouble. It was not safe to leave me alone. So I was always around my mom and and my nana in Mexico City, and we would cook all the time and in the kitchen, they would give me tasks. And it was like one of the first things that really caught my attention.
And by the time I was 5, my parents gave me a night to cook. I would, literally would have a step stool over a stove to cook things. And back then, you know, obviously, you know, I would make this, this steak tapiquena. And I would do my own version of it where I would put Tabasco, … lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, and seasoning, and then I'll grab a mallet and beat the steak with a mallet.
So imagine this 5-year-old kid, you know…
LAUREN GILGER: You'd love that.
ROBSON: Yeah, I loved it, but the kitchen was a complete disaster. I mean like they had to clean the ceiling afterwards.
Robeson grew up in Mexico City before moving to San Antonio, where he got his first job in a restaurant as a high schooler. He felt right at home. He went to college and studied psychology, but decided he wanted to go to culinary school instead. So, he ended up here at the Scottsdale Culinary Institute, working his way up through the culinary scene in the Valley, until in 2009, he opened his own restaurant in the Clarendon Hotel.
ROBSON: I literally had about $30,000 of credit cards and about $10,000 of cash, and I said, we'll go for it. And then we ran out of money like the first month of, of …
GILGER: One month in and you're out of money.
ROBSON: Yeah, we hadn't even opened yet. We're still doing the construction and all that. And so I, I, I decided to sell my wife's car, cash in that, that, that check and, and took that money and, and open my first restaurant.
GILGER: I mean, that's quite a journey, right? And, and I wanna back up and ask you a question about something you said at the beginning, ‘cause I think it's really interesting, ‘cause I've heard this from so many chefs now doing the series that they, you know, were not good at school, kind of got in trouble a lot. This was something that they felt like they could excel at. Why do you think that is? Like, what, what about it for you, especially as a kid, like drew you?
ROBSON: Well, I think, you know, there's a lot of stimulus. You're doing a lot of things, you're getting bombarded with information, with tasks, you have to multitask. Amd for whatever reason, like people with my type of brain excel in those situations because you're literally, you're playing to your strength, which is in the normal world, it's your biggest weakness because everything we're taught in school, it's like, you know, kind of linear and we're not linear.
We don't see one possibility. We see a lot of possibilities at one time. So it gives you that that nimbleness to be able to adjust really quickly to situations in the restaurant.
GILGER: Do you think it's about adrenaline at all for you? Oh, the restaurants are so high stress.
ROBSON: They are, they are. I mean, I, I, I remember when I first started the restaurant, there was a period where, where I get home and I wouldn't go to sleep till like 3 in the morning. I'm so hopped up on just the service and that's why you see a lot of chefs that have like a substance abuse problem or they develop these really bad habits.
I was very fortunate that one, I was driven that I had a goal in mind and most of the chefs that I worked with and was mentored by, they guided me towards, you know, go home, go home. Between having a kid and a wife that was very, very responsible, you know, it like, it kept me on this, on this path of like, I'm gonna just keep at it.
So I was very fortunate because I've seen a lot of friends that much more talented than I am, that really wasted their career away because they got into, into substance abuse and, and other things because of a way of coping with, with the stress of, of being in the restaurant business.
GILGER: Yeah. That's an interesting perspective. I want to ask you about the food, right? Because that's got to be part of it, too, for you and it is for every chef. You said you, you'd always wanted to go to a Mexican restaurant. You're from Mexico City.
It's not like Arizona Mexican food. Like this is not like Norteño kind of food that we're used to here, and you'll know that, right, if you've eaten at Gallo Blanco or Otro, like it's a little different. What is it about the food itself that inspires you that you love?
ROBSON: When I wanted to open Mexican restaurants, the original Gallo Blanco, I said it's gotta be, it's gotta be something that people from Mexico City could come in and say, yeah, this reminds me of home, because for me that's what I long for in, in a Mexican restaurant.
So I said like we're gonna do Central Mexico food for Gallo Blanco, but growing up in Mexico, having my mom being Vietnamese and her cooking Vietnamese food, I didn't distinguish between Vietnamese food and Mexican food.
Because, you know, it's what we ate at home, so I had these family recipes, and I said, you know what, with, with Otro could be an expression of my experiences with Tex-Mex, my experiences with my mom and my dad's cuisine and, and recipes. So that's why we call it Otro, the other, the other side of Gallo Blanco. We're gonna be creative and and pull from family recipes and at the same time explore what we can do with that cuisine without bastardizing or taking away from it.
GILGER: So that brings me to the restaurant we're sitting in now, right? Your new space to Tesota here and, and this is not Mexican at all, right? What was the concept here? I mean, like you're pulling from kind of all over. Is this to do with your family where your parents come from? From the food you cooked as a kid?
ROBSON: So yes and no. I think, I think, you know it's, Tesota for me is an expression of, of what I like to eat. One of the things that we do well is we like to do comfort food. Like at the end of the day, Gallo is comfort food, also is comfort food. So we wanted to continue that idea or that, that vision that we want to do comfort food, but from around the world.
And not that I'm bored of making, making Mexican food because, you know, there's, there's so much more to learn about Mexican cuisine. But when we inherited the, the space from, from Southern Rail, it had a pizza oven, it had all these fun pieces of equipment. So for us, it's like let the space dictate what it should be. So let's utilize a wood -burning pizza oven and you know, let's make pizzettas, which is a smaller version of a pizza.
So that way when you come in, you can have a beautiful piece of salmon pan seared and, you know, like a harissa shrimp and hummus or or all these little different things that you can literally come in. And the way the menus is composed, you can have a different experience every time and never get bored of it.
GILGER: So when you're building a new menu like that, when you're building a new dish, what do you do? Like, this is a team I know you work with. Do you just start messing around ideas? Are there things you make at home that come to fruition? Are there things like, oh, you know, I've never tried this, and I wonder what'll happen? A lot of it probably goes out the window, but what's the process?
ROBSON: So in sort of specifically, you know, it was a collaboration and we sat in the in the, in the space while they were doing construction. And we grabbed the big white board and we looked at the equipment and we said, OK, it's gonna be global comfort food. So we sat there and literally came up with about 100 different ideas.
GILGER: 100.
ROBSON: Yeah, we were like on, we're on a roll. We went through these exercises and and and narrowed it down to specific things and then from there, you know, we played on our strengths, you know, we would work together and then we would sit, sit down, eat them, and critique each other's food. And, and go, well, it needs more of this, needs more of that and, you know, by the third or fourth iteration we felt like, OK, it's it's really close. So we developed, the whole concept was developed by us sitting down and collaborating.
GILGER: OK, so question. I always ask everyone ‘cause I think it's fun to ask chefs a question like this. What do you cook at home? Do you cook at home? What's in your fridge?
ROBSON: So I, I do all the cooking at home.
GILGER: Really, OK.
ROBSON: Yeah. We're pretty vegetable protein heavy. But more than anything like my spice shelf is, is, is ridiculous. From sumac to Za'atar to any, any kind of rub that I find to smoked paprika, to like, I even have MSG that I buy. It's, it's more about those kind of things that you, you can add ingredients to cooking at home is super important.
Like if you don't cook at home as a chef, you should, because that's where you really develop a sense of like restaurants are an extension of somebody's home. I want people to come in and feel like they're eating a home-cooked meal even though it's in a restaurant with that, that kind of love and and and attention.
