Celebrated Tucson chef Odell Baskerville dies at 60

Odell Baskerville, who left a career in retail management 25 years ago to fulfill a lifelong dream of cooking and went on to became one of Tucson’s most respected chefs, died on July 21. He was 60.

Baskerville had been battling twin cancers — gastric and brain — for nearly two years and had been able to keep both at bay until 10 days before his death, said his widow, Alison Owen. On the morning of July 11, Baskerville taught classes at the Art Institute of Tucson, where he was on the culinary faculty, and that night was admitted into St. Joseph’s Hospital.

“Even a few weeks prior to him going back to the hospital this last time, he was still going to work and teaching his classes. You couldn’t stop him,” said Baskerville’s son, Peter, who attends Pima Community College.

“He just wanted to keep going. He didn’t want to let the illness stop him from doing what he loved to do. He was so passionate about what he did, about cooking and teaching others how to cook.”

Baskerville had no formal culinary education. He grew up in Fulton, New York, not far from Syracuse, with five sisters and a brother. Their mother attended night school, so the siblings would race one another home from school, and whoever go there first got to cook dinner.

“They all enjoyed cooking dinner,” said Owen, noting that one of her husband’s brothers also pursued a cooking career.

Baskerville earned a degree in English literature and had his teaching certificate, but after a short teaching stint, he pursued a career in retail management. He worked at Montgomery Wards and moved to Tucson in 1984, taking a job at in the late 1980s with Thrifty Drugs.

When Thrifty announced plans several years later to leave Tucson, Baskerville decided to pursue cooking, Owen said.

“He went to Loews Ventana Canyon Resort for a job interview and expected to get a job as a dishwasher just to get in the door,” she recalled. Instead, “He was given a job in garde manger,” an entry-level cooking position.

Within six years, Baskerville worked his way through the ranks to become sous chef, the kitchen’s second-in-command. His other stops included Janos and Miraval Life in Balance Resort and Spa before he joined the Arizona Inn as sous chef in 1998.

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It didn’t take long for the University of Arizona-area resort to name him executive chef, a position he held for nine years, helping the resort earn its first-ever AAA four-diamond ranking for the main dining room. Baskerville left the restaurant in 2009 and worked at a few restaurants, including a short stint with Albert Hall at his Foothills restaurant, Acacia Real Food & Cocktails.

“Odell was probably one of the most even-tempered chefs that I met in my life to the point that he was unflappable,” Hall said Monday from Oregon, where he moved recently after closing Acacia in May. “His knowledge of food was fantastic. And he was just a wonderful human being.”

Baskerville in recent years turned his attention away from cooking and focused more on teaching.

“He loved teaching. He loved passing on his knowledge,” said Elizabeth Mikesell, a PCC culinary instructor who worked with Baskerville in the school’s internship program and on the board of the Tucson chapter of the American Culinary Federation Chef’s Association of Arizona.

“He was very, very witty, but also a very talented chef,” said Art Institute colleague Brian Burton, who directs the culinary program. “He’s the type who would take his time and build his team at the restaurants he worked at. Even as a chef instructor here, he would stop and help our students, whether it was in culinary or in life. He would circle back around and have that conversation with a student … to maybe help them be a better cook or just to give them some advice.”

Peter Baskerville, who said his favorite times with his father were spent watching movies from his dad’s vast DVD collection, said his father gave him great advice throughout his life.

“He was patient and kind, loving and very wise. He had a lot of good advice that he gave to me; I could pretty much come to him with any problem I had and he could help me through it,” he said.

The best advice his father gave him: “Do what you love and the money will follow.”

“That really stuck with me, and it’s good advice for anybody,” Peter Baskerville said.

Owen said the family will hold a memorial service in the coming weeks.