Food Original: A Stove Superstar, Talavera’s Chef de Cuisine Samantha Sanz

By: Brian Garrido

Samantha Sanz began working at Four Seasons Scottsdale, Troon North’s Talavera, a little more than seven months ago. On her first day working the kitchen line, under the resort’s Executive Chef Mel Mecinas, Sanz broke ground becoming the youngest female chef de cuisine currently working at any of the Four Seasons North American properties at the age of 26. Now, 27, she is still the youngest female and Latina chef working within Canada and the United States which blankets thirty-seven properties and sixty restaurants.  Already, she has been cooking professionally for almost a decade.

Ms. Sanz is incredibly dedicated to her craft. As Chef Mecinas sits nearby, Sanz speaks about learning culinary secrets and uses her hands imitating rolling out dough or shaping a tortilla. Born in Nogales, Arizona but raised in the city’s Mexico side, she’s been cooking since she was six. “My mom was on the phone watching me. And she said to her friend, ‘My daughter just made a perfect omelet’”, she recalls. “I did. I made an omelet.”

As Sanz grew up, she learned cookery skills from her grandmother in the well-known family restaurant located in Mexico’s Sonora state using local ingredients. The location is widely known as some of the country’s leading agriculture including cattle ranches and chili farms.

Growing into her teen years, it was indisputable that a chef’s life was stirring. By the time she was eighteen, she was working with Chef Beau MacMillan at the legendary Elements, the restaurant attached to Sanctuary at Camelback. For three years, under MacMillan’s tutelage she worked prep, while attending culinary school full-time and applying the tools taught to her while working at in high-end destination kitchen. “I worked really hard and Chef taught me so much but I wanted to do something different. My friends were in college doing things. Professionally and personally, I had gone immediately into my career,” states Sanz. “I decided to go to Paris.”

Identifying with Remy (the protagonist in Disney’s Ratatouille) and without knowing a single word of French, Sanz was in the City of Lights, perusing the metropolitan fabled eats and dining any way she could. “I was working with two young kids, but cooking. I loved going to Bon Marche”, she recalls of her experience. “I learned a lot while I was there but I had to come back.”

On her return and barely twenty-three, she became a Gio Osso’s sous chef at Virtu. Working closely with the kitchen helm for three years, she ran the line as the Mediterranean fare establishment received national accolades, such as Esquire’s Best New Restaurants. “We worked together and I learned a lot from Chef Gio. We still talk but I was getting restless. One day, I saw Chef Mel walking through an event (Chef Gio and I) were working and I said, ‘I’m going to be working for him’”.

In a twist of fate, Mecinas (2016’s Outstanding Chef from Arizona’s Culinary Hall of Fame) had just lost his former chef de cuisine. In the same day the cook gave notice, Sanz directed an email saying she would like to work with him. It was a kitchen match. “I had to ‘audition’ for (Chef Mel) still and his team at the hotel including the general manager. We were required to make three dishes but I made six. I wanted the job that badly.”

Chef Mel said, “The day that I got her email, I had received notice from my former chef de cuisine. It was meant to be.”