Like countless other restaurant workers, San Antonio chef Jesse Kuykendall had a cry in the walk-in cooler early in their career.
During a particularly stressful shift in the kitchen of a California resort, the young culinarian broke down in the cooler. They were a newcomer to the state and overwhelmed by the job. What's more, the resort's head chef had just humiliated them in a verbal tirade in front of the whole crew.
In frustration, Kuykendall kicked a cardboard box — which happened to be full of loose peas. Thousands of them spilled out, covering the cooler floor in a mottled sea of green.
Seconds later, the irascible head chef threw open the door of the walk-in trying to figure out where his employee had gone.
"It was the most intense place I'd worked at that point in my career, the biggest kitchen," said Kuykendall, whom colleagues call "Chef Kirk." "And this chef found me on the floor in the walk-in, and was like, 'Pick up these peas, and then we'll talk about what you need help with. I see you're having a tough time,' and he gave me this smile. And that's the first time I realized that the old-school chefs are not all dicks. Some of them are hard on you because they want you to learn."
That early experience helped drive Chef Kirk to create inclusive, positive spaces for their colleagues, no matter how heavy the workload. The chef identifies as non-binary, and prefers the pronouns they/them.
That workload can be intense. Kirk qualifies as one of the hardest-working culinarians in the city, pivoting between Ocho at downtown's historic 27-room Hotel Havana and a pair of Mexican street food concepts under the Milpa umbrella: a food truck and a brick-and-mortar space at The Yard in Olmos Park.
The 38-year-old chef's star rose even higher last year when they bested three other pros on Food Network's Chopped competition show. They have also continued to build a local following by serving up their personal take on the South Texas food of their childhood.
Beyond that, Kirk works diligently to offer knowledge and support to those on their hardworking team.
During a typical weekend, Kirk and crew work two, sometimes three, services daily: brunch and dinner at Ocho, afternoon brunch bites on Sundays at Southtown cocktail haven Amor Eterno and whatever catering gigs pop up in between. Through it all, Kirk remains positive, chipper and motivated, colleagues said.
"'Spunky' isn't the right word, maybe 'charismatic' is better," said Manny Olivarez, Milpa's director of operations and Kirk's right hand. "There's just this infectious happiness in everything Kirk does, you can literally feel the good vibes coming off [them]."
Rough upbringing
But that unwavering positivity wasn't always there. Prior to Kirk's foray into the culinary world, the native Laredoan lived a rough-and-tumble life. Fistfights and beefs between neighborhood gangs were part of their upbringing.
"I'll never forget the first time I got in a fight in San Antonio, and someone called the cops. I was like, 'What are you doing? What are they gonna do?'" Kirk said. "In Laredo, someone wins the fight, and you vow to redeem yourself some other day. I was floored by the thought that you could actually get arrested for fighting here. I was thinking, 'Assault? What's that?'"
Anger consumed much of the chef's twenties. A less-than-healthy relationship with alcohol ended in a DWI, which they now joke kiboshed their dreams of becoming the next Lola la Trailera. The 1985 Spanish-language film follows a young woman who finds herself immersed in a world of violence and drug trafficking after her father's murder.
After the DWI conviction, things spiraled.
"I was mentally unstable. At that point in my life, I didn't know what I wanted to do with my career, I kept getting into trouble," Kirk said. "The disappointment of my mom, my family ... I was just kind of like, 'What am I doing?' And I've never really talked about it, but then, I didn't want to be here. I wanted to just disappear."
In December 2015, another bout of impulsive, self-destructive behavior which Kirk declined to detail resulted in severe injuries to both feet and ankles. The doctors told the then-aspiring culinarian the injuries were comparable to those from head-on vehicle crashes. The recovery was grueling.
"I had just finished culinary school orientation two weeks before the accident, and the doctors were telling me, 'You're going to get arthritis in your feet, it's going to happen,'" the chef said. "Sitting in that wheelchair, all I was thinking — as someone training to be a chef — was that I needed to learn everything I could, tackle everything I could, before anything else happens. I became obsessed with learning about different cuisines and techniques, reading everything I could while in that wheelchair."
Nearly a decade later, Kirk still suffers from debilitating pain, which they try to mitigate with over-the-counter pain relief. They deliberately avoid high-powered painkillers.
Kirk also struggles with the emotional and mental scars of those painful early years.
"I'm so fortunate to have health insurance [through Ocho and Hotel Havana] that allows me to go to therapy," she said. "'Don't be a little bitch in the kitchen,' you know. 'Kitchens aren't for crying.' Those mentalities are just so old-school. We need to take better care of ourselves."
New-school approach
Kirk said she works to foster a more enlightened approach in each of their kitchens, making a conscious effort daily to check in with each cook and learn about the individual goals of each employee.
Kirk credits therapy with their learned ability to receive criticism, problem solve and build a workplace that values communication.
"I think we're in a new era where you want to be able to communicate with your staff and really understand their goals," Kirk said. "You see me all over the place, always running around, but I'm able to do that because of the communication and trust, the loyalty that we have for each other on this team we built. That has really helped me stay on top of everything else. It's like a family."
Kirk's idea of family and camaraderie stems from a strong relationship with their mother, a first-generation American who sold tamales and catered events in Laredo to support her kids.
The culinarian also recalls the church providing food for the family — proverbial mystery boxes that ended up being beneficial training for the Chopped competition.
On that show, Kirk outcooked three other pros to take home a $10,000 grand prize. The fact that foods from their South Texas upbringing — quesadillas, mole and churros — helped land that victory reinforces the value of the chef's culinary approach.
Ironically, though, when Kirk landed their high-profile job at Ocho, their focus was on a further-flung Latin cuisine.
"When we first hired Kirk, [the Bunkhouse Group, which operates Hotel Havana] wanted Cuban food, so Kirk showed up on [their] first day with Cuban cookbooks from the library, ready to talk about possibilities," former Hotel Havana General Manager Joey Boatright said. "There was this hunger to learn and create something new that I think keeps evolving into a really unique food identity for the hotel."
Culinary evolution
These days, the menu is Chef Kirk's love letter to the humble fare of her South Texas upbringing — rooted not just in Cuban influences but those of Mexico and Texas. Menus at Ocho and Kirk's two Milpa outposts boast dishes elevated in both flavor and presentation, an illustrative roadmap of the chef's professional evolution since they launched Milpa in 2018.
For a time during the pandemic, Boatright and Kirk were Hotel Havana's skeleton crew — building what Boatright called something of a trauma bond. Though Boatright has since moved on to a new venture in nearby Boerne, he remains impressed with Kirk's imprint on the San Antonio food scene.
Milpa operations director Olivarez echoes that sentiment.
"For every goal, there's a plan in place, and every day is one step closer to realizing those goals. There's this drive that people are starting to notice, and I think the core group of people we work with, our little family, is the most important part of those plans," he said. "We work like a family, we have fun, we love what we do. And people see that, see how important it is, because of personalities like Kirk."
Kirk intends to continue that legacy of creating inclusive, positive workplaces because it was in those environments that they discovered their own voice as a member of San Antonio's culinary community.
"I knew coming to Havana that I was going to have to push a little bit of 'me' aside, and I'd have to do something for the job itself. I felt really weird. But after a while, I realized, 'You know what? I can change their minds,'" Kirk said.
"If I just start showing them that I can put my personality, my stories into plates, they will fall in love with the food as much as I have. And now they just tell me, 'Tell your stories, share your experiences. We trust you.' I'm so lucky to have that, and I want to give that push to other people."
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