When it comes to ingredients, less is definitely more, in Cameron Ingle’s view. Before entering his new role as executive chef at Pico Los Alamos, Ingle worked for Blue Hill at Stone Barns, where “70 percent of the dishes made were three ingredients,” he said.
Ingle is approaching his new offerings at Pico in similar fashion, he explained.
“Right now we have a cauliflower purée on the menu that’s going with our duck breast and fava beans,” Ingle said. “It’s such a simple dish, right? You look it and you’re like, ‘There is not a lot on this plate.’”
When customers ask what’s in the purée, many are surprised to hear it’s just cauliflower and salt, Ingle said.
“It feels like it should have cream in it but it doesn’t. … It’s literally just boiled cauliflower blended in a blender,” Ingle said. “And they’re like, ‘No way! No way!’ That’s the reaction I love.”
For Ingle, cooking is all about preparation and finding the perfect balance between simplicity and depth.
“It’s so easy to cook with truffles and caviar, that’s the easiest thing to do. I can make a mediocre risotto with white truffles in it and you’re gonna go, ‘Wow this is delicious,’” Ingle said. “But to cook something, like a vegetable, and to cook it well, and then to have you eat it and go, ‘Wow this is really good,’ that to me is the pinnacle of what cooking should be.
“Not to bash anybody that uses truffles and caviar,” Ingle said with a laugh. “It’s just not something that I like to do.”
Ingle’s menu at Pico Los Alamos is broken up into three sections. The first is dedicated to seasonal, shareable dishes, such as oysters and mignonette sauce, or burrata with a pickled blueberry salad. The second section includes light entrees, such as hand-cut linguini, while the third features heartier, protein-based entrees, such as grass-fed steak.
The menu will change regularly, based on what’s in season locally, as most of the ingredients used are sourced within a 60-mile radius of Pico. The restaurant is located within the historic Los Alamos General Store, originally built in 1880. Pico opened in 2016, under co-owners Will Henry and Kali Kopley.
Henry described Ingle as “a natural fit for what we’re trying to create,” in press materials announcing the new executive chef’s arrival, and he outlined the venue’s focus on “all that’s local, all that’s fruitful and available to us in this section of the California Central Coast.”
Ingle grew up in Plymouth, Michigan, which he lovingly described as a small town that Los Alamos reminds him of. At age 12, Ingle worked his first restaurant job at an Italian eatery in Plymouth.
His first responsibility was “counting straws in the basement, doing inventory,” Ingle said. Shortly after his 13th birthday, Ingle was asked to work in the kitchen during the restaurant’s busy New Year’s Eve service because one worker didn’t show up.
“I was super lucky at that restaurant; I had really great mentors,” Ingle fondly recalled.
Regardless of how much influence his first restaurant experience had on his future career, Ingle said he had already grown up in a household that felt like the perfect setting “to coddle a chef,” he explained.
“I was super fortunate to grow up with my great-grandma, my grandma, my mom, and my great-aunt—all the women in my family all cook, and even a lot of the men in my family cook,” Ingle said. “So I grew up with my great-grandpa cooking sausages on his grill outside with all the men, and they’d stand around and drink beers and play lawn games. I would hang out with them and then I would go inside and I would talk to all the women who were baking.
“So I just bounced back and forth between eating really great food,” Ingle continued.
The chef described the landscape of his childhood memories as “an environment where every ounce of love you can imagine was given through food,” he said.
“Cooking makes me feel good, and I like to make people food because it makes them feel good. That’s my whole goal when I walk in the kitchen every day. If you sit down for dinner, I want you to sit down and at the end of your meal go, ‘I feel great right now,’” Ingle said. “I want you to eat something and feel like it’s something your grandma cooked for you.”
Send Arts Editor Caleb Wiseblood your favorite childhood meal at cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jun 9-16, 2022.