Texas native Rick Lopez has served as Executive Chef at James Beard-nominated La Condesa for 12 of its 14 years. We caught up with the chef whose kitchen has launched many notable careers for a quick chat – and summer salsa recipe.
You’ve been Executive Chef at La Condesa for a dozen years, how do you keep it exciting?
I spend time making sure we stay relevant. I want to make sure I’m learning from my staff and making everyone feel valued and cool in this space. A 14-year-old restaurant is old! Five or six years is still cool, but 14, being in the heart of downtown Austin, I want to make sure that we're providing for new people coming in through our food and our service, down to the music we put through the speakers and the art we put on the walls. I’m a dad and my daughter won’t think I'm cool in a few years, but I want to be still cool and relevant to our staff, which means I have to work really hard to bring in new things.
When you started at La Condesa the Austin restaurant landscape was different, how do you feel about the evolution?
It’s good. In those early days, people were like, ‘It's gotta stay this little city of live music, drippy queso...’ I used to feel at the core when you drive into Austin you get this feeling that you can do anything, you can be who you want to be and you can step away from wherever you grew up and be what you want. I still feel that same spirit and vibe, just now I look at it as an entrepreneurial spirit. And, it’s a little bit harder because it’s a more expensive city and you have to come here with some smarts and know what your path is going to be, or figure it out pretty quickly….When people came to work at La Condesa, it was the new restaurant, there was a hotel being built next to it, 2nd Street was carving out its niche and people thought it was a nice, beautiful restaurant that had the street food of Mexico and Thailand. But did we think we’d be here for 14 years? I don’t know. The quality of cooks has been incredible. Now it’s a serious food city and people look to Austin as a really good food scene. I don’t know if that’s something my 18-year-old self in 1999 would have ever thought.
Quick Fire
First job in a restaurant?
McDonald's. My aunt franchised Mcdonald's and that was my intro to fast-paced food
Best cooking advice you've received?
Be a vegetable. (Ask Chef Rick about that one if you see him).