Chef Mark Miller

Be sure to follow Marks adventures: @ancho64

Mark Miller is an American chef, restaurateur, author, global flavor designer/consultant, and culinary thought leader. He is recognized as an early pioneer and developer of the importance of Non -European Cuisines, Ingredients, techniques to the American Culinary Culture, and specifically, one of the founders of Modern Southwestern Cuisine. He is regarded as an expert on chiles, and salsas and through his restaurants, food companies and cookbooks influenced their adoptions into the American mainstream food scene. Notably, he was the first person to write a complex flavor lexicon for chiles, in any language, including Spanish or English. Previously they had been classified by heat scale, color, shape, or botanical genealogy. An inveterate traveler, Mark lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Mark was born and raised in the Boston area with a French-Canadian heritage. Because of the city’s ethnic diversity, he was exposed to a range of international culinary and cultural experiences from an early age. One of his earliest indelible cuisines was Mexican, experienced in local cafes and in gourmet settings like the famous La Fonda del Sol, in New York City, with its intense colorful palate in the design and robust flavorful Mexican dishes. Mark always was a contrarian and explorer; his inspirations for flavors stemmed from his strong French-Canadian Food Culture and his inquisitive nature for the exotic…as a child, his friends wanted to go to camp; Mark wanted to go to India.

He is an anthropologist by academic training – he decided on this path at the early age of 12. As an undergraduate he majored in Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, with a minor in Chinese Art History, his specialty in Anthropology was Art and Culture, specifically cross-cultural aesthetics. And his field area was Culture of Japan. He spent a semester as an exchange student at Merton College, Oxford, in the UK, and after receiving his Bachelors, Mark then spent three years in Anthropology graduate studies and a teaching assistant at U of California, Berkeley.

Mark began his immersion in the world of food by producing the Market Basket, an independent subscription newsletter that explored the emerging food culture and consciousness. It delved into cultural perceptions and cuisine, the wine scene, and reviewed cookbooks. His kitchen apprenticeship began in 1977 at Chez Panisse, Alice Waters’ iconic Berkeley restaurant that focused on flavorful, adventurous dishes and that was at the leading edge – “Ground Zero” -- of the California Cuisine movement that led to the subsequent regional cuisine revolution.

In 1979, Mark opened his first of 13 restaurants, Fourth Street Grill in Berkeley, which featured Mark’s modern interpretations of classic Southwestern dishes that he enjoyed and researched during frequent trips to the region. He immersed himself increasingly in the flavors of Mexican and Latin flavors and Mark’s passion, creativity and expertise became evident in his use of vibrant flavors. Reviews described the Mark’s menu as Modern Southwestern Cuisine, and he was an early leader in reviving cooking with Mesquite wood. He led other long-term culinary trends of the time by serving fresh pasta, changing the menu daily and cooking over an open grill. Mark’s food highlighted the complexity of ethnic flavors and paired them with an artisanal wine program.

In 1981, Mark’s second restaurant, Santa Fe Bar and Grill, opened at the former Santa Fe Railroad Depot in Berkeley, which featured Cajun, Caribbean, and Latin American dishes as well as the Southwestern cuisine for which Mark was now becoming synonymous. Meanwhile, Mark continued his travels to New Mexico and the Southwest, Mexico, and South America to research ingredients and techniques.

In 1986, Mark moved to his beloved Southwest and to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he opened the landmark Coyote Café the following year. The dishes he created there were built on Native American and Mexican-European traditional cowboy cuisines of the American Southwest, with a distinctly updated twist – creating from within a tradition rather than trying to copy tradition. Like many art forms, Mark’s Modern Southwestern Cuisine was a fusion of ideas and ingredients informed by history and a sense of place.

In 1991, Mark opened the Southwestern-themed Red Sage restaurant in downtown Washington D.C., across from the Willard Hotel. Costing $6m, it was dubbed the most expensively decorated restaurant in the capital at the time and received rave reviews. Esquire magazine named it Best New Restaurant in America for 1992. Mark has also created and operated restaurants in Las Vegas (Coyote Café at the MGM), Austin (Coyote Café), San Francisco (Raku), Tokyo (Zia), and Sydney. The Wildfire restaurant in Sydney, facing the iconic Opera House, was one of the top ten-grossing restaurants in sales in all of Australia. Mark was instrumental in restaurant design for all of his properties. He has consulted in the creation of restaurants for Marriott, Hilton, and Starwood properties, in San Antonio, Phoenix, and New Mexico.

Throughout his eminent career, Mark’s outlook has remained consistent: “My food philosophy is to engage people in a sensory, cultural world that they’re not familiar with.” He attributes his success to his cognitive ability for taste and smell, and a talent for remembering and dissecting flavors. He says he was drawn to food through perceptual skills rather than a burning desire to be in the restaurant business.

Mark’s groundbreaking culinary career, combined with his academic approach and first-hand practical experiences enabled him to develop Southwestern-related food products that include Coyote Cocina, an award-winning line of premium salsas, sauces and hot sauce, and Flavoristas Salsa Company, producing premium salsas and seasonings for the grocery and foodservice industries.

Mark is a self-proclaimed “food strategist,” and his consultancies over the years have included American Airlines, Kellogg’s, Starbucks, Ja-Zenchu (Japanese Rice Board), Texmati Rice Corp., Boston Market, Hormel, Heinz, Coca-Cola (Japan), Pei Wei (PF Chang’s), Kimberly Clark, Darden Restaurants International, Wegman’s Grocery, Central Market/HEB Grocery, YUM (Pizza Hut), Safeway, Oberto Jerky Company, Rubio’s Coastal Grill, Santa Maria Spice Company, and Red Lobster. His academic approach and his first-hand experiences give Mark an unparalleled global perspective of the food sector, especially in his areas of expertise – Latin and Asian cuisines.

Mark has been recognized as one of America’s most influential chefs over the years and has received many awards and accolades that include: Johnson & Wales University Honorary Doctor of Culinary Arts, James Beard Foundation, Who’s Who in America: One of the 25 Most Important People in Food, Food Arts magazine: Lifetime Silver Spoon Award, Restaurant Hospitality magazine: Ivy Award – Coyote Café; and for Lifetime Achievement, Life magazine: One of the Four most important American Chefs in the 1980s (with Wolfgang Puck, Paul Prudhomme and Alice Waters), Esquire magazine: Best New Restaurant in America – Red Sage

Books:

·      Coyote Café

·      Coyote’s Pantry: Southwest Seasonings and Home Flavoring Techniques

·      The Great Chile Book

·      The Great Salsa Book

·      Mark Miller’s Indian Market Cookbook: Recipes from Santa Fe’s Famous Coyote Café

·      Cool Coyote Café Juice Drinks

·      Flavored Breads: Recipes from Mark Miller’s Coyote Café

·      Red Sage

·      Tamales (with Stephan Pyles and John Sedlar)

·      Tacos

·      Salsas of the World

 Suggested Reading:

Mouthfeel: How Texture Makes Taste. Mouritsen

Umami: Unlocking the Secrets of the Fifth Sense .Mouritsen

Felt Time: The Science of How we Experience Time 

Marc Whittmann.  MIT Press

Your Brain as A Time Machine: The NeuroScience and Physics of Time. Dean Buonomano

Super Senses: The Science of Your 32 senses  and How to Use Them.   Emma Young

Sensuous Geographies: Body Sense and Place Paul Roadway

Flavour Thesaurus: Niki Segnit

Neuroenology: How the Brain Creates the Taste of Wine. Gordon Shepherd 

Neurogastronomy: How the Brain Creates Flavor and Why it Matters.  Gordon Shepherd

Smellosophy: What the Nose Tells the Mind.  A S Barwich

Taste as Experience: The Philosophy and Aesthetics of Food.  Nicula Perullo

I Taste Red: The Science of Tasting Wine. Jamie Goode