Plano Chef Juan Garcia Carries North Texas Cooking to Invited's Chef of the Year Finals
Gleneagles Country Club's executive chef finished as a finalist at the private club industry's culinary competition in the Dominican Republic, and says listening to members has shaped his career as much as technique.
By Valentina Cruz ·
Juan Garcia, executive chef at Gleneagles Country Club in Plano, took his cooking well beyond North Texas this year as a finalist in Invited's Chef of the Year competition. The event, held April 20-24 at Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic, gathered a select group of chefs competing for one of the private club industry's notable culinary honors.
Garcia represented both Gleneagles and Invited, a company that operates more than 150 private golf and country clubs, city clubs and stadium clubs across North America. The annual competition drew more than 1,000 nominations, and more than 200 ClubCorp golf clubs took part. Garcia did not win the title, but he came home with a wider view of the profession.
His route to the finals ran entirely through North Texas kitchens. Garcia joined Invited in 1998 as a line cook at Las Colinas Country Club, rose to executive sous chef, and later became executive chef at Stonebridge Ranch Country Club in McKinney, where he stayed six years. He said Gleneagles had been his goal since he started with the company. When General Manager Bryant Early offered him the job, he said, running two clubs successfully had given him the confidence to accept.
The most useful skill he has picked up, Garcia said, is not a culinary one. "What has helped me the most is learning how to truly listen," he said, adding that a clear understanding of what members want makes a club easier to manage and grow. He pairs that attention to preferences with an effort to stay current on developments in the culinary world.
After his return, Local Profile sampled dishes he prepared for the competition. One was a blue corn taco filled with lobster prepared pastor-style, along with avocado and mango. The other was a caramel popcorn crème brûlée served with vanilla ice cream and topped with a crisp, honeycomb-shaped corn-and-sugar layer. Garcia built the dessert around memories of family movie nights. Neither dish is on the regular Gleneagles menu.
That menu leans on familiar favorites. Portobello mushroom fajitas offer a vegetable-forward take on a Tex-Mex staple, with peppers, onions and squash. The house dry-aged ribeye is a longtime favorite among members. Garcia said no single dish captures his style. "I believe the way I build the menus is more telling of who I am and the membership I am serving," he said.
Living and working in Collin County has also shaped his cooking, he said. Access to many cuisines within a small area has encouraged him to experiment with a wide range of ingredients and flavors. North Texas draws on Mexican and Tex-Mex cooking alongside Asian, Mediterranean and contemporary American influences.
More than 15 years into his career, Garcia said he values knowing there is still much to learn. At Casa de Campo, he said, what he appreciated most was the camaraderie among competitors: "Everyone helping each other to have a successful event regardless of what was on plate."
Asked whom he would most like to cook for, Garcia named neither a celebrity nor a fellow chef. He said he would like to cook alongside his grandmothers and make their tamales. Family gatherings with them, he said, are what first drew him to cooking.
Source: Local Profile
