{"id":16381,"date":"2017-02-24T07:48:08","date_gmt":"2017-02-24T14:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=16381"},"modified":"2017-03-01T08:53:27","modified_gmt":"2017-03-01T15:53:27","slug":"red-lodge-chef-honored-again-in-james-beard-contest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2017\/02\/red-lodge-chef-honored-again-in-james-beard-contest\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Lodge chef honored again in James Beard contest"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Muirhead\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

M\u00e1s Taco owner Michael Muirhead works on the Thursday special\u2014roasted beets and feta cheese empanadas.<\/p><\/div>\n

Michael Muirhead\u2019s first brush with the James Beard Foundation Awards<\/a> came in 1998.<\/p>\n

It was his first day on the job at the famed Spago<\/a> restaurant in Beverly Hills, and he was hoping to meet the owner-chef, Wolfgang Puck. But Puck was not there that day. He and two of his top chefs were finalists in different categories of the James Beard contest that year, and they were off attending the awards ceremony.<\/p>\n

The second brush came last year, when it was announced that Muirhead, the owner of M\u00e1s Taco in Red Lodge, was one of 20 James Beard semifinalists for the title of Best Chef in the northwest region, encompassing Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Alaska.<\/p>\n

A week ago, he found he\u2019d done it again\u2014the only chef in Montana to make the list of semifinalists in the Northwest region<\/a>. In all 21 categories there were 420 semi-finalists\u2014pared down from 24,000 nominees.<\/p>\n

Last year was a good year anyway for M\u00e1s Taco, Muirhead said, with business up 45 percent over the previous year. But there was definitely an uptick after news of the honor started circulating.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw a lot of first-timers in that era,\u201d he said, \u201cpeople wanting to know what the hype was all about.\u201d<\/p>\n

The hype was all about good, fresh, authentic Mexican food, the kind of food that brings people like Red Lodge resident Willis Johnson coming in week after week. He was there Thursday, getting lunch to go for him and his wife.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/em>\u201cIt\u2019s the only place we really go out,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s my wife\u2019s favorite place. Mine, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the specialties is pork \u201cal pastor\u201d\u2014pork roasted on a spit with Mexican spices, served with pineapple and thin slices of onion. As with the other dishes on the menu, it can be served as a taco, empanada, quesadilla or burrito. M\u00e1s Taco also serves carne asada, stuffed poblano chiles, chicken and shrimp dishes and homemade soups, salads and salsa.<\/p>\n

It also makes its own pickled carrots as a garnish. The carrots are so popular they are packaged and sold at M\u00e1s Taco, as well as at Moon Lake Market and Beartooth Market, both in Red Lodge.<\/p>\n

Muirhead opened M\u00e1s Taco a little over six years ago at 304 N. Broadway, in what used to be a Conoco station directly across the street from the Red Lodge Carnegie Library. It is a cozy little place, with 13 seats in the winter and about triple that number when the patio is open.<\/p>\n

\"304\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

M\u00e1s Taco is located at 304 N. Broadway in Red Lodge.<\/p><\/div>\n

Muirhead did a lot of traveling before settling down in Red Lodge. A native of Southern California, he began working in his uncle\u2019s restaurant in Camarillo in 1986, as a senior in high school.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started working there shucking oysters\u2014my first job,\u201d he said. There would be many restaurants after that, but it was while working at Norbert\u2019s in Santa Barbara in 1990 that he decided to make a career in the kitchen.<\/p>\n

Norbert\u2019s was small, 24 seats, but it served five- to seven-course meals every night. There were a few regular items on the menu, Muirhead said, but for everything else, \u201cI got to come up with my own dishes every day,\u201d often based on what was available at a nearby farmers\u2019 market.<\/p>\n

He was going to college then and working 60 hours a week, until it dawned on him that being a chef was all he wanted to do. He quit school and never looked back. Over the years, he said, he worked in 24 restaurants.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d go where I wanted to be and find the best restaurant,\u201d he said. Highlights included a stint in Columbia, Calif., at a \u201cvery French\u201d restaurant, and a job in New Hampshire, where he worked as a baker and pastry chef.<\/p>\n

After New Hampshire, he decided he needed some European experience. Torn between France and Italy, he concluded that Italian was an easier language to learn, so he moved to Florence, where he spent seven months working in two restaurants.<\/p>\n

\"Mike\"<\/a>

Michael Muirhead<\/p><\/div>\n

After returning to California, he worked in Sacramento and Los Angeles before landing the job at Spago in 1998. He started as a line cook making minimum wage and worked his way up to right-hand man to the executive sous chef.<\/p>\n

In addition to cooking for the restaurant and its catering business, Muirhead said he was heavily involved in Spago\u2019s biggest event of the year\u2014catering the Governors Ball at the Academy Awards. Between the lunch and dinner crews, there would be as many as 50 people a day in the Spago kitchen.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was overwhelming how many people could work well together,\u201d he said. The most important thing he learned from Puck and his restaurant, Muirhead said, was that no matter how many people were working, or how big the event was that you were working on, the smallest details were always important.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gave me an appreciation for the highest level of cooking,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But it was intense. He regularly worked 70 hours a week, he said, more than 100 hours a week in the lead-up to the Academy Awards. He knew that if he ever wanted to settle down and start a family, it wasn\u2019t going to happen if he was working at a place like Spago.<\/p>\n

So he quit, and he doesn\u2019t think it was a coincidence that he met Jenny Boggio four months later, at a Starbuck\u2019s in Burbank. She was a native of Red Lodge, working on a master\u2019s degree at Claremont College.<\/p>\n

Eventually, they went back to Camarillo together, where Muirhead\u2019s uncle asked him to fill in for a chef who\u2019d left his restaurant\u2014the same place Muirhead started his career\u2014after many years.<\/p>\n

\"Chimi\"<\/a>

M\u00e1s Taco<\/p>

Chimichanga ala M\u00e1s Taco.<\/p><\/div>\n

Muirhead worked there while making plans for his own restaurant, Safire, which he opened in 2006, also in Camarillo. He worked at Safire for six years while overseeing the kitchen at his uncle\u2019s restaurant. In 2010, by which time he was married and Jenny was pregnant, he sold his share of Safire to his other partners and moved to Red Lodge to settle down.<\/p>\n

Having visited Red Lodge over the years, he said, \u201cI always thought it would be great to live here.\u201d<\/p>\n

He originally planned to open a hamburger joint, until he and Jenny realized there were no Mexican restaurants in Red Lodge. He had never worked in a Mexican restaurant himself, but he had friends in the industry from all over Latin America and he\u2019d prepared a lot of Mexican dishes for family and friends.<\/p>\n

It appears to have been a good choice.<\/p>\n

Asano Otsu, the general manager at M\u00e1s Taco, said people, particularly people from the Southwest, are often amazed to find such authentic Mexican food high in the mountains of Montana.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe get that all the time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Michael Winn, who cooks at M\u00e1s Taco, swears it true. \u201cI\u2019m from San Diego and they\u2019re still the best tacos I\u2019ve had,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Muirhead is obviously proud of making the James Beard list of semifinalists, but he doesn\u2019t appear to be in danger of letting it go to this head. Thursday morning, as he talked about the competition, he was simultaneously preparing the weekly empanada special\u2014this week an empanada stuffed with roasted beets and feta cheese.<\/p>\n

He was using an ancient Cuisinart food processor to mix the beets, feta and cream, which only worked if Muirhead manipulated the broken \u201con\u201d button with a wooden food skewer.<\/p>\n

He was talking about how, when the five finalists are announced this spring, they would be watching on a television in the kitchen.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I win,\u201d he said, \u201cI\u2019m buying a new Cuisinart.\u201d<\/p>\n

Details<\/strong>: Check out\u00a0M\u00e1s Taco’s Facebook page<\/a> for daily specials and other news. The restaurant is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and 11 to 9 in the summer. It is also open in the summer on Sundays from 11 to 4.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Muirhead\u2019s first brush with the James Beard Foundation Awards came in 1998. It was his first day on the job at the famed Spago restaurant in Beverly Hills, and he was hoping to meet the owner-chef, Wolfgang Puck. But Puck was not there that day. He and two of his top chefs were finalists […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,18],"tags":[5562,5563,386,5564,5565],"class_list":["post-16381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-diversions","tag-mas-taco","tag-michael-muirhead","tag-red-lodge","tag-spago","tag-wolfgang-puck","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16381"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21470,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16381\/revisions\/21470"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}