Bay Area restaurateur Angelo Heropoulos has a knack for turning misfortune into opportunity. As he said in a July interview, before the current spate of wildfires broke out, “When there’s a fire, most people run away, but instead, I run toward it.”
Heropoulos may have been speaking metaphorically, but when he opened OPA! in Los Gatos, it was the beginning of the 2008 recession, and he managed to make that work right up to the point where he sold his interest in the chain to move on to other things.
One of those things was Hero Ranch Kitchen in Saratoga, which has been open for nearly a year now in the site of the former Sent Sovi, where David Kinch once plied his magic, and later, Josiah Slone served up his memorable multi-course meals.
Things went so well for Hero Ranch Kitchen and Heropoulos so loved the community, that he knew he had to expand his footprint in Saratoga. When a property next door to Hero Ranch Kitchen became available, he jumped on it. At the same time, he stepped up his search for the right chef to help make the new eatery, dubbed Flowers, something above and beyond anything else in the Village.
He lucked out in Las Vegas, where he found chef Ryan Nuqui working at the Mandarin Oriental, which had just been purchased and overnight had become a Waldorf Astoria.
“I had never had that experience before,” says Nuqui, who studied at the CCA in San Francisco, followed by stints at the Monterey Plaza Hotel and Pebble Beach, after which he attended culinary school in Australia. “I had opened up a lot of restaurants, like Fleur de Lys in Mandalay Bay and Yellowtail at Bellagio, but I had never opened up a hotel within in a hotel. It was a wild experience.”
After 20 years of working in Sin City, mainly in conjunction with his mentor Hubert Keller, he was ready for a change. He stepped up to head the kitchen at Flowers, which recently opened on Big Basin Way.
Nuqui says he interviewed with Heropoulos after Thanksgiving last year, and was really excited about the opportunity to return home to the Bay Area. “It’s such a food-oriented community and one that really appreciates high-end cuisine,” he adds. “People here really understand the benefits of eating local. In Vegas, everything I used was overnighted from LA or San Francisco. I’m eager to meet and support our local farmers and purveyors.”
One look at his painstakingly plated dishes, many adorned with flowers, and you know Nuqui has roots in haute cuisine. “People eat with their eyes. They expect something that is worth their while when they go out to eat,” says the chef.
Nuqui strives to create dishes that are exciting to both the eyes and the palate. His lobster carpaccio, a take on a dish he served at Yellowtail, is served with crisp apple slices marinated in yuzu, finger lime, sea beans, fennel, ponzu and nasturtiums, while his “Perfect Chicken” is cooked sous vide then seared and braised in thyme, garlic and brown butter.
“My elegant style of plating comes from years of working at high-end luxury hotels,” he explains, adding that he’s not wedded to a particular style of cooking. “I embrace everything. I am not stuck on any one type of cuisine. Ingredients and seasonality dictate menus for me. I take this as an obligation to deliver honest dishes that showcase freshness. My style blends classic traditions with modern techniques. I do like taking new, fun approaches, but my food is not too fussy: you can still recognize things.”
Given the Bay Area’s proximity to the Pacific, Nuqui says, he’s looking forward to creating dishes with Dungeness crab.
“I am planning to debut a crab roll wrapped in sliced apple, much like a fruit roll,” he says. “It will include citrus, shallot, chive and rice cracker—kind of like sushi—along with orange aioli. We were doing Tomales Bay oysters with limoncello sorbet on top before the fires.”
The chef says his family’s love of seafood helped lead him to a culinary career. “Neither of my parents are cooks, actually, but both my grandmothers were, especially my grandma on my Mom’s side. She cooked a lot of seafood. I love making crudos and fish dishes. Fish is so delicate as a protein; it takes a special approach. Plus, seafood is not limited like the proteins we get from land-based farming. The ocean is a vast mass of possibility.”
The premiere Flowers menu includes prosciutto and melon with compressed melon topped with balsamic and Sicilian pistachios; and Merquez braised lamb loin duo, served with eggplant caviar, beet symphony and zaatar yogurt. Nuqui also prepares all the food for Hero Ranch Kitchen’s weekend brunch.
Flowers, at 14577 Big Basin Way, serves dinner Wednesday-Sunday, 5-10 p.m. Reservations are recommended to https://www.opentable.com.
