Bruce Yim, executive chef at The Grill at Hacienda Del Sol, was on a break from San Jose State when he decided to take a summer job working in the kitchen of a Washington, D.C., restaurant.
Yim, a San Francisco native, had always been interested in cooking. From an early age he would scour his mother’s magazines looking for new recipes. What Yim did not realize when he accepted the summer position was that the family acquaintance who offered him the job was a four-star French chef. Yim spent the summer building salads and desserts under the supervision of Chef Yannick Cam. When it was time to return to school, Chef Cam asked Yim to stay on.
“I was working 80 hours a week and loving every minute of it,” Yim said. “Just seeing the food he was preparing, the creativity and the intensity, the camaraderie, the rush, everything about it was exciting.”
The French chef was tough and lacked a filter.
“Yannick was a character,” Yim said. “He was your best friend one minute and super intense the next.”
The experience prepared him for a lifetime in the restaurant business.
“A lot of kids nowadays don’t understand,” Yim said. “The screaming, the yelling, the pat on the back and the kick in the ass, it’s all for a reason. It doesn’t seem like it is, but it is.”
Yim had planned on attending cooking school, but Cam told him to save his money and advised him to learn on the job.
Yim left Cam’s kitchen after a year and a half and went on to cook at restaurants in Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, Venice, Italy and Vail, Colorado. Eventually, Yim, a 2001 James Beard House honoree, returned to San Francisco to work in Wolfgang Puck’s Postrio. In 2006, Yim moved to Tucson and opened Vin Tabla with his business partner. Before hiring on at Hacienda Del Sol four years ago, Yim worked at Wildflower and Downtown Kitchen + Cocktails.
How did you get interested in cooking?
“My family has always been interested in food. My mom always cooked, every day different meals. It wasn’t always the same thing. It was the early ’60s. In the ’60s a lot of people were doing recipes from the back of the box. We had spaghetti and meatballs and tuna casserole. I tell my guys the first tamale I ever had was from a can. They say that’s gross. I tell them: ‘It’s probably no different from when you grew up. You had Chung King from the can.’”
What is the best or most memorable meal you’ve ever had?
“Every time I go back to San Francisco I have dim sum. I have never had good dim sum anywhere else except San Francisco. Well, that’s not true — in China. But with that exception, San Francisco.”
Beyond the food, it seems like it is the experience that makes a meal memorable?
“That’s part of what dining is all about, the experience. In a four-star restaurant, the experience is not just about the food, it’s about the show. In every restaurant, even though there’s a clash between the front of the house and the back of the house, it’s like a brother and sister. You hate each other and you love each other and you have to work together. Postrio was the first restaurant I worked at with an open kitchen, so you actually got to see the servers work, and there were times when the servers made a mistake. … You kick in, the whole line, and put (the order) out in a timely fashion so the customer doesn’t see a glitch in the system. Or if the kitchen burned a pork chop you see the server go to the table and take care of it. Whatever they did, they smoothed over the problem so the customer doesn’t feel the glitches. That is very important, to understand the pros and cons of each person’s job, and that takes a lot of practice. And understanding it’s not about you. It’s never about us, it’s about the customer and the food and the service.”
