Micah Waltz’s love of food is, quite literally, homegrown.
“My mom always had beautiful gardens full of vegetables and so I really grew up, ‘What are we going to eat tonight?’ It was always something out of the garden,” he said. “And my best friends and I would always go out and forage and get different wild things, like morel mushrooms. And we’d have venison steaks and things like that. So, I kind of found myself in the kitchen.”
Waltz’s parents frequently hosted food-filled gatherings and took in exchange students, cementing Waltz’s sense of hospitality and expanding his palate. Since those homecooked meals in Post Falls, Idaho, Waltz has honed his culinary skills and style at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Scottsdale, Arizona, hotels like the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, and fine-dining establishments such as CUT by Wolfgang Puck in The Palazzo Las Vegas and Jean Georges Steakhouse at the Aria.
Now, he shares his talents as the executive chef of Crave Kitchen and Bar (165 E. Colchester Drive, Eagle).
“We're relentless on developing recipes,” Waltz said. “I'll make a dish 20 times before we put it on the menu. We make sure everything that we do is thorough. Whether it just needs more umami, more salt, more vinegar, more citrus, more acid. We make sure all those pinpoints of flavors are hit, so the guests really leave satisfied. We’ve had guests say, ‘Hey, I've had this at other places. But this is the best place I've had it.’”
And Waltz is proud of his kitchen crew.
“We run a pretty traditional brigade system of ‘Yes, Chef; No, Chef,’” he said. “But there's the utmost respect for everybody. It really goes to the morale of the kitchen. With my background and Dustin’s (Kinzer, Chef de Cuisine), we've seen so much and have seen the right way to run things. Kitchens in the past were very hardnosed. But nowadays, you really nurture relationships with cooks and ask questions: ‘How's your kids? What did you do this weekend?’”
Waltz and his wife, Connie, decided to move back to Idaho from Las Vegas to get away from long hours and to raise their daughter, Hartley. Waltz ended up at Crave after his brother recommended it.
“I came in to Crave and told (co-founder Ken Boyle) where I was at, and he asked me what I wanted,” Waltz said. “And I said, ‘I want time with my family. I want to go to soccer games. I want to be there in the times where I'm supposed to be.’ So that's something we shook on. And I've been chef here for about three years now.”
When he’s not directing Crave’s kitchen, you can find Waltz floating the river, picking huckleberries, paddleboarding, or playing golf anywhere from Eagle to Donnelly.
And for dinnertime, you’ll find Waltz back in his domain.
“My two favorite things are dumplings and burritos, burritos first,” he said. “But ideally, if I'm going to cook for my wife and my kid, it's going to be either some rice or some form of starch, and then I'm smoking something. I really try to challenge myself. My daughter's favorite is pork belly or dry-aged ribeye.”
If you’re looking for a new entrée to try, Waltz recommends Crave’s Honey Chipotle Pork Shank.
“I have to say it’s a dish I'm particularly proud of,” he said. “We braise it, and it just falls apart. I think that's a real standout to people.”
And Waltz is always looking for something new to bring to the Crave menu.
“We're very methodical on making sure our brand is creative,” Waltz said, noting that he and Kinzer take quarterly research-and-development trips to find new flavors and dishes. “Things that really fit our profile. I think the thing we really hang our hat on is we don't pull anything out of a box and put it on a plate. Everything is made from scratch. We put a lot of heart and love into it. And I promise you, you're really going to notice that quality and the difference of what we’re putting out.”