No one has walked the plank … yet, but if Andrew Larkin, executive chef at Lodge on the Desert, is to be believed, he and his crew are living the pirate’s life and that’s what drew him to a career in cooking.
“I liked the abuse, the rough hours, the hot fire, the knives, all the crazy pirate-like characters working together for the better of the ship or the kitchen, but when you get them together they’re pretty crazy. They’re all different, they walk with a different limp,” Larking joked.
His analogy between cooking and a seafaring life doesn’t end with his band of buccaneers. It is reflected in the new summer dinner menu at Lodge on the Desert which is heavy on seafood and grilled meats with an Old Pueblo twist.
One of the most original offerings, a seafood cocktail appetizer, is made with shrimp and a seasonal fish ceviche, served with michelada and saladitos. For the uninitiated, saladitos are dried, salted plums. Michelada is “like a Mexican Bloody Mary” with beer, Larkin said.
The seasonal menu also features mussels, octopus, paella, tamales, salads and heavier fare, including a turkey-sausage pasta dish, a ribeye and pork chops. However, even the weightier meat dishes are lightened with summery sides such as grilled broccolini with whiskey demi glaze, bourbon burnt peaches and fried green tomatoes.
“We’re reaching out to the farms weekly,” Larkin said. “We have a variety of rotating vegetable specials. It’s nice having … actual people come to deliver produce and give me ideas of how to cook it.”
Larkin also has incorporated artisan goat cheese from a local farm and fresh, unpasteurized juices into the Lodge’s breakfast, lunch and dinner menus.
“I’ve never had a nicer goat cheese before,” said Larkin of the product from Fiore di Capra dairy. “I think we got really lucky to find them. You can taste how much she loves these goats.”
Larkin was named executive chef at Lodge on the Desert four months ago, but it’s not his first turn at the historic midtown landmark. He worked at the Lodge under chef Ryan Clark for a while, then took a job on Long Island, New York. Before long, though, a lack of tacos and fresh herbs and citrus had him returning to the Old Pueblo — and the Lodge — where he joined the kitchen as sous chef before being named executive chef.
“I didn’t realize how much coriander and oranges mean to me,” Larkin said of his brief stay in New York.
Larkin, a Tucson native, has worked in kitchens at the Gallery Golf Club, the Ritz-Carlton, Cushing Street Bar, Caffe Torino and various Italian restaurants. He studied cooking in Denver and incorporates French techniques and Southwestern flavors into many dishes, but Italian cooking holds a special place in his kitchen. It was at Michelangelo Ristorante Italiano that Larkin got his first taste of restaurant life.
How did you get into cooking?
“I just turned 16 and I went out looking for a job and went to Michelangelo’s on the northwest side and they asked if wanted to be a dishwasher or busboy. I choose dishwasher so I didn’t have to deal with customers. A few months later I was on the line learning to toss pizzas. I had other jobs, but I just kept going back to that kitchen life and I fell in love with it.”
What is your earliest food or kitchen memory?
“Both my parents worked all the time and I was a latchkey kid, so I would come home from school and I would have to cook for myself. When I ran out of Hot Pockets, what do I do?”
What is one of the most important skills you learned in the kitchen?
“Say, ‘Yes, chef.’ Keep your head down and work, stay clean and say ‘Yes, chef.’ When you are starting that’s all you need to know. Everybody knows how to peel a potato, but if the chef tells you you don’t know how to peel a potato, then there’s no time to argue. I got to learn so many different techniques from so many different people. If I didn’t know how to cook something, I’d ask the chef or the sous chef or the little old Mexican lady dishwasher. That’s the most important thing, being able to soak up information from everybody.”
