Sammys Cafe & Deli – Albuquerque, New Mexico
Most foodies have pondered the expession “Never trust a skinny chef.” Maybe you’ve even mused if there’s any truth to it. Your line of thinking probably goes something like this: “If a chef’s cooking is any good at all, how can that chef possibly resist stuffing himself (or herself)?” With this train of thought, every chef should look like Paul Prudhomme, the brilliant Creole-Louisiana Cajun chef who once weighed more than 500 pounds. Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, who’s not shy about expressing his opinion, called the notion that you shouldn’t trust a skinny chef “BS.” To the contrary, the volatile Ramsay believes “In order to be consistently excellent, a chef must “stay fit.” As my friend Bill Resnik and I strode into Sammy’s Cafe & Deli, we ran into the very fit Chef Marc Quiñones who had just finished his morning run. Chef Quiñones runs distances some of us get tired driving. He’s the proverbial high-energy somatype, a dynamic whirling dervish in constant motion. Moreover, he exemplifies a paraphrase of a famous Homer Simpson quote: “Chef Marc Quiñones: Is there nothing he can’t do?” At least in the culinary arena, the answer to that Jack Handy deep thought is “no.” …
