{"id":211038,"date":"2015-09-23T06:06:56","date_gmt":"2015-09-22T20:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=211038"},"modified":"2015-09-23T06:06:56","modified_gmt":"2015-09-22T20:06:56","slug":"a-chef-is-more-than-just-the-cooking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/a-chef-is-more-than-just-the-cooking\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A chef is more than just the cooking\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Being an executive chef is more than just having the skills to cook delicious food.<\/p>\n

This is the philosophy of Aqua Resort Club\u2019s new executive chef Ed Olarte.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need to think of what you\u2019re going to present, not only in terms of quality and taste, but you also need to balance your expenditure,\u201d Olarte said.
\n

\"Ed<\/a>
Ed Olarte is Aqua Resort Club\u2019s new executive chef. Olarte is introducing new items and reinventing ARC\u2019s menu to hook more customers to their table. (Frauleine S. Villanueva)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Just three months after starting at Aqua Resort, Olarte said he already implemented changes in their menu, how they present food, as well as how they run things in their kitchen.<\/p>\n

With more than 40 years in the industry under his belt, most of it on Saipan, Olarte already knows what he\u2019s doing working in the kitchen.<\/p>\n

Prior to ARC, Olarte worked for Hyatt Regency Saipan from 1986 to 2012. He also worked for a time in Guam and at Coral Ocean Point Resort Club.<\/p>\n

In Olarte\u2019s book, the wise way of using food and ingredients is needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need to present the food good and make use of the ingredients in a smart way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

One example of this is what Chef Ed did to one of their items for their Seafood Night.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I noticed, especially during our Seafood Night, which is really popular, food cost is high. I noticed how they present, for example the smoked salmon, a lot of the food gets wasted,\u201d Olarte said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I did, I presented it in a different way. We used the Mexican fajitas to wrap slices of smoked salmon and cream cheese,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Another of Chef Ed\u2019s beliefs is that you have to know what the people want\u2014and to do that, you have to really talk to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen there are a lot of customers, I go out and talk to our customers. That\u2019s part of my job, to know what their feedback is regarding our food,\u201d Olarte said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat they say, I relay them to my cooks,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Olarte also believes that the presentation is what really hooks customers to the food first before the taste, so he tells his cooks to present food in the most appetizing way possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tell them, the customer\u2019s first impression is what you want to get first. Once they enter the room, you have to wow them with how the food is presented and build their appetite,\u201d Olarte said, \u201cSecond, you have to get them by the taste of the food.\u201d<\/p>\n

To try out Olarte and his cooks\u2019 specialties, dine at ARC Costa Terrace Restaurant where they have special dinner buffets every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday. Their famous Seafood Night is on Tuesdays and Fridays while Steak Night is on Saturdays. They also have lunch buffets with different themes everyday and special brunch on Sundays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Being an executive chef is more than just having the skills to cook delicious food….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":211039,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[4807,7182,7183,7184],"class_list":["post-211038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-aqua-resort-club","tag-chef-ed","tag-ed-olarte","tag-seafood-night"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}