Gold rush

La Toque, The Palace Hotel, Goldenette Diner, Bohemian Grove, Santa Ynez Valley, MORE

WORK • Wednesday Routine

Hat trick

KEN FRANK • executive chef & owner • La Toque
Neighborhood you work in: Napa

It’s Wednesday morning. What’s the scene at your workplace?
I’m the owner/chef of La Toque at The Westin Verasa Napa, and I’ve been cooking for a little over 50 years now. In addition to my pride and joy, La Toque, we operate the entire food and beverage department at the hotel.

Wednesday is the first day of the week for the La Toque kitchen after two days off, and the day we typically roll out menu updates. I’m usually in about 10a and check in with my team in the back kitchen, where we service all of the hotel outlets. If I have any meetings planned, I like to get them out of the way in the morning so they’re less disruptive to the groove we get going in the afternoon as we prep for service. Once the La Toque team arrives in the early afternoon, we review all the prep lists and get everyone pointed in the right direction.

By mid-afternoon the team usually has a new dish or two ready for all of us to taste and figure out a great wine pairing. This is really the core of what we do, we all get involved and it’s a highlight of the day. At 4p, we all sit down for family meal for 30 minutes, and we eat well. We also play a game we’ve long called “mystery wine.” One of the somms or sometimes one of the cooks will provide a blind mystery bottle. We all get a taste and work through the grid to identify it blind. Staff that have been here for years have developed very astute palates this way, and it’s something we all learn from. At 530p, it’s “doors” and into service we go.

Any restaurant plans today, tonight, this weekend?
I’m a restaurant animal, having spent almost every day of my life since I was 16 in a

restaurant somewhere. I like working in restaurants, I like eating in restaurants, and I’m relentlessly assessing the local dining scene. In Napa we go to Zuzu pretty regularly. But we also like going omakase with Chef Ichiro at Morimoto Napa, and I’m always down for great pizza. Oysters at Hog Island are a must on a regular basis.

How about a little leisure or culture?
I’ve always been a music geek, specifically anything rooted in the blues, rock, and R&B. We will travel anywhere in the world to go see the Rolling Stones and we get to cater the Bonvoy VIP deck at BottleRock every year. The kitchen we set up for that is in the Artists Village they build out backstage. It’s a very cool vibe.

I also indulge myself in caring for my reef tank and its live corals. It’s a chance to channel my inner Jacques Cousteau. Reefing, as we call it, is a never-ending learning process with lots of engineering, biology and chemistry, all things I happen to like. I’ve been hooked on aquariums since I was about 8, and reefing is the end stage of that condition! Careful, it’s a slippery slope.

Any weekend getaways?
We like to sneak down to the city on Monday nights and have dinner. We always stay at The Palace. We are overdue for another great experience at Lazy Bear.

What was your last great vacation?
Last fall, we went to Aix-en-Provence for 10 days. We rented an Airbnb right in the center of town. It’s just a beautiful corner of the world. I didn’t realize how close it was to Marseille. If you don’t eat well in Provence, you’re just not trying. We ate out sometimes, and cooked from produce we got at the local farmers market a few times. We had a very good dinner at Licandro, but the meal of the trip was in Marseille. We Ubered down to lunch at Une Table au Sud, right in the old port. The meal was off the hook!

I also just got back from Milano, where I cooked for VIPs at the Winter Olympics for three weeks. We were based in the new hockey arena; it was a blast. We also enjoyed some killer dining at Il Luogo di Aimo e Nadia and Langosteria.

What’s a recent big-ticket purchase you love?
I bought my wife a really good Canon professional photo printer. She’s a florist and has a great eye.

What store or service do you always recommend?
Bookmine in Napa. It’s a bookstore, and a community.

Where are you donating your time or money?
In Napa we adopted the South Napa Shelter when the pandemic hit, run by a fantastic Bay Area organization called Abode. We send them hot nutritious lunch every Thursday and Friday for about 90 people. And we do it largely with donated food. We have more than enough food in this country — delivering it the last mile is the hardest part. That we tolerate any level of persistent hunger in this great country makes me crazy. It’s a choice we make as a society: we can and should do better.

Photo: Suzanne Hawken

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WORK LINKS: Is your boss on the Bohemian Grove list? • Remaking work conversations • When you’re managing human and virtual co-workers • Office tips for the world’s first trillionaire.

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Rosy outlook

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