In Chef’s Choice, the Naperville Sun asks local chefs to share their culinary background and experiences and to talk about a featured dish found on their menu.
This week, we speak with Simitrio Cruz, 41, owner of Nature’s Best Cafe, which opened in March 2016 at 1904 Brookdale Road in Naperville. His restaurant career started with busing tables in 1995 and he spent 19 years working at Bloomingdale’s department store restaurants in Chicago and White Plains, N.Y. (the “largest restaurant in New York outside of New York City,” he says).
Question: What gave you the idea after two decades to open a place of your own?
Cruz: I enjoy doing what I do and cooking for others and enjoying the food I make. Also, my kids have gluten issues and I started playing around with that and realized there is a need so why not open my own place?
Q: Do you see yourself as a gluten-free restaurant then?
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Cruz: Well, there are certainly a lot of gluten-free options and you can make any of the menu items (here) gluten free. I like to eat farm-to-table options as well so a lot of what we use is locally grown when it’s available.
Q: What about food is the most satisfying thing for you?
Cruz: Coming up with new things and seeing the reaction of the customers.
Q: Give us five go-to ingredients you use again and again.
Cruz: Garlic, celery, carrots, fresh herbs in general — whatever is available during the season.
Q: When you go out for dinner with your wife, what’s your favorite thing to order?
Cruz: I still like salads and also a grilled steak. But because of my background, I go out for tacos. I bring some of that flavor also into what I do. I make a pizza here with green tomatillo sauce.
Q: If you were dating now and trying to impress your date, what would you make?
Cruz: I would say pasta, although gluten-free pasta tends to fall apart if you don’t eat it right away, and a nice homemade sauce, whether creamy or white wine and garlic.
Q: What’s a food you were made to eat as a kid and that you still really hate?
Cruz: Honestly, I can’t think of anything really except maybe cactus, but I’ve still eaten it on a taco.
Q: What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever eaten?
Cruz: Armadillo was something we ate when I was growing up. It was something we just had.
Q: A lot of people are intimidated by cooking. Where does that fear stem from?
Cruz: Sometimes it’s just their ability with knife skills, they are afraid of doing that. And also people are afraid to play with spices and don’t feel they know what they’re doing. But overall, I think it’s knife skills.
Q: What’s your favorite childhood dish that you love to this day?
Cruz: It would have to be chicken with mole and poblano. Mole is a sauce that’s a little sweet and (has) a little chocolate and chilies. That’s what I miss and certainly enjoy once in a while. My grandmother has passed but my mom still makes it.
Q: Did you ever eat anything that made you sick, not because it was bad but because it just didn’t agree with you?
Cruz: Cheeseburgers. When I first got here, I wasn’t used to eating them. Now they don’t bother me.
Q: Tell us about the dish you are featuring for us.
Cruz: It’s a mango chicken salad composed of spring mix greens, fresh mango, walnuts, sundried cranberries, chicken that I roast in the oven, and mango vinaigrette that I make myself. It’s our most popular salad.
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun.
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