South LA Food stuff Diaries: Chef Turok dazzles consumers with ingenious flavors

Brian Menendez, also regarded as Chef Turok, has worn several hats in his daily life: DJ, chef, writer, baker, proprietor of Turok’s Cheesecakes. He’s accomplished it all.

Chef Turok’s good expertise can be summed up by the origin of his nickname, “Turok,” which was supplied to him in higher university as a nod to his inventive pursuits. He started a occupation in music when he was 18, at which point his title became Johnny Turok as his personal homage to Johnny Carson.

“Once I started performing in the kitchen area it just progressed into Chef Turok, and I experienced a catering enterprise termed Prepared Turok simply because I was often prepared to rock a kitchen area or a cafe proper on the location,” he said.

And that proper there is as genuine a assertion as ever: Chef Turok rocks the cheesecake planet.

As explained to by Chef Turok, his cheesecake journey began in his Salvadorian house, seeing his mother in the kitchen and experimenting with unique components that he observed all around the dwelling. He then switched paths entirely and commenced DJing and even went on an underground hip-hop tour. On his way back from the tour, he had yet another need to improve his occupation route.

“I made the decision that I was heading to get two months away from every little thing to determine out what I really want[ed] to do with my life. Two times following finding back again from the tour, I observed a professional for the Cordon Bleu and it just brought back everything…Within that identical 7 days I just enrolled and went ideal into college,” Chef Turok mentioned.

Following ending culinary faculty, Chef Turok used time as a sous chef at different dining places. Regrettably, just one of these careers finished with a get the job done-linked personal injury that took him out of the market for 4 many years. For the duration of that time, he made the decision that if he could not be in the kitchen area, he would do the subsequent most effective issue: try to eat delightful meals and publish about them. Mainly because of the accident, Chef Turok experienced attained pounds, but he states that this was an benefit in meals-blogging.

“You can in no way believe in a skinny chef so I believed I was quite trusted with my size,” he stated, laughing.

Nevertheless, this occupation did not pay the payments, so he searched for a little something else.

Chef Turok contacted a pal who was marketing artisanal goods at a coffee store in Boyle Heights and asked if he would sample a cheesecake.

“I informed him that I make cheesecakes and if he appreciated them, he could market them,” Turok claimed. “If not then at minimum I tried using. So I took practically the last 50 bucks that I had to get myself to the location and I had him try them. As quickly as he little bit into it he practically just pointed and reported ‘I want that.’ He bought what I had on hand.”

In a stroke of destiny, 30 minutes afterwards, the Los Angeles Journal food stuff author and taco connoisseur Monthly bill Esparza confirmed up, attempted the cheesecake and also loved it. Two months later on, Turok’s Cheesecakes was featured in the journal. Considering that then, Esparza has invited Chef Turok to all the festivals he has structured.

“It was just the suitable area at the correct time. I could not have questioned for just about anything else. So then I just held hustling and making an attempt to get into different places and was normally on the grind,” Turok said.

The recipe for these now-renowned cheesecakes was designed when Chef Turok was in a cheesecake-producing course at culinary school. Up till that issue, he experienced under no circumstances baked.
In truth, he walked into course that day under no circumstances getting even designed a Betty Crocker boxed cake combine. Talking of that fortuitous working day, he stated, “I went into the wander-in fridge and I noticed they experienced the tub of mascarpone cheese there, and I asked the instructor, ‘What if I did a cheesecake with this?’’’

Right after one 12 months of perfecting the recipe, Chef Turok had produced his signature cheesecakes.

Contrary to traditional cheesecakes which use cream cheese, Turok’s cheesecakes use mascarpone. Mascarpone is frequently said to be an Italian edition of cream cheese, but so comfortable that it can be scooped with a plastic spoon. Whilst mascarpone is extra costly than product cheese, for Chef Turok its use is justified by the textural difference.

“It literally melts in your mouth as soon as you bite into it. It does not adhere to the roof of your mouth like a sure manufacturing facility does,” he reported.

Chef Turok tends to make his sauces and crust from scratch. Rather of just using graham crackers, he also provides almond meal into the crust to enable retain humidity. In other phrases, as the Turok’s Cheesecakes internet site claims, “this is the finest damn cheesecake you will ever consider.”

Two supporter favorites are the sangria cheesecake and the creme brûlée cheesecake. The sangria cheesecake has a tart sauce that is generously poured about a slice, assuring that each chunk is coated with the smooth flavor. Where by as the sangria cheesecake stands out with contrast in taste, the crème brûlée cheesecake contrasts in texture. The really hard shell is torched in front of the customer’s eyes, and it releases smoke that turns the plating into a clearly show.

Chef Turok results in flavors like these based on what is in time. He also creates flavors exclusively for food stuff festivals this kind of as Monthly bill Esparza’s Taqueando Festival. For instance, the aloha kine was made for a foodstuff competition and pays homage to the time Chef Turok lived in Hawaii. The crust takes advantage of macadamia nuts and Hawaiian vanilla, and the cheesecake is topped with freeze-dried pineapples and strawberry chips.

In spite of these ingenious flavors, Chef Turok has fulfilled customers who declare to not like cheesecake. Every single time, he makes them a guarantee and states, “You know what, attempt it. If you really don’t like it, you really do not have to spend for it.” Every single time, the shopper can take a chunk and stops in their tracks, astounded. This is what he finds to be the most rewarding part of his organization: seeing his customers’ faces the initial time they get a chunk of one of his cheesecakes.

In an e-mail to the Each day Trojan about the pandemic, Chef Turok reported he had to near store for four months for the protection of his loved ones and himself. He reopened in July and partnered with an further restaurant in Uptown Whittier to have his cheesecakes. He is having orders for pickup and shipping, and has executed safety measures to maintain his consumers safe and sound.

One day, Chef Turok hopes to have a brick-and-mortar shop from which he’d sell his cheesecakes. He also desires to be able to make sufficient cheesecakes to not only supply other places to eat, but also to source cruise ships.

For now, purchasers can assist Turok’s Cheesecakes by buying them at a wide variety of eating places which include Holbox in the Mercado La Paloma around USC and Michelin-starred Nick and Stef’s Steakhouse in downtown Los Angeles. In fact, when the owner of Nick and Stef’s to start with attempted Chef Turok’s cheesecakes, according to Turok, he experienced only a person point to say: “This shit’s fucking fantastic. And I want to offer it.”

Apart from the dining establishments that market Chef Turok’s cheesecake, his scrumptious creations can also be considered on Instagram @turokscheesecakes and requested by means of his site www.turokscheesecakes.com.