A visit to Cucina 503 in Martinez to sample some of its fine Italian cuisine might find owner and executive chef, Edward Mendoza, darting about in jeans and sandals. If he’s not there, however, he could be on a yacht in Belize, or filming a documentary for Discovery Channel or on some other culinary adventure abroad.
For all his accomplishments, the Augusta-born chef keeps a modest disposition.
“We are very quiet,” said Mendoza about his Cucina staff, many of whom he has worked with for years. “We don’t advertise; we’re not on the internet. I’m not out there. We just want to cook good food and do our thing.”
Mendoza adheres to a creative and professional principle of keeping things simple, which may not be obvious from either his seasoned resume or the several roles he juggles.
Along with Cucina, he has also recently opened Local, a breakfast and lunch diner on Evans to Locks Road. He does regularly travel to Belize, working as a chef at the Radisson Hotel in Belize City and the Lodge at Chaa Creek resort in San Ignacio, Belize.
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As a consultant for Aggressor Adventures Liveaboards, a scuba touring company based in Augusta, he trains chefs on luxury yachts. This recently resulted in Mendoza participating in two episodes of “Survivorman,” a documentary television series on Discovery Channel.
In the series, Mendoza joins host Les Stroud and renowned culinary artist Paul Rogalski in Belize where they fish for uniquely Caribbean seafood such as conch and lionfish.
A brief glance at how Mendoza got here would show someone who fell in love with—or just became adept at—cooking and meticulously built a career around it.
Mendoza traces his aptitude and his career path to his youth. To him, his training and his cooking chops started in Augusta.
“I grew up in restaurants,” said Mendoza. “I started at Cadwalladers when I was 14, washing dishes, and I’ve done it ever since.”
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After he earned his Bachelor of Business Management from Augusta State University, and a degree in Culinary Arts from Johnson Wales University in Vail, Colo., Mendoza worked under Southern fine dining chef Louis Osteen at Louis’s in Charleston, S.C. and as executive chef at La Palapa Del Mar in Long Beach, Calif.
He later worked at several restaurants in Dallas where he was a founding teacher at the Le Cordon Bleu Institute of Culinary Arts in Dallas. Mendoza got his training in French cuisine during his time there, studying at the Le Cordon Bleu International Training Center in Ottawa, Canada. His experience as a chef includes the Masters, the Kentucky Derby and even the Super Bowl.
Once he returned to Augusta, Mendoza opened a diner he called Kitchen 1454 before partnering with his friend Faulkner Warlick to launch a dinner spot called Finch & Fifth.
“After opening, we just decided we’d have our own businesses and would be better off not being partners but being friends,” he said. “So I sold him my half of Finch & Fifth and came over here and opened Cucina.”
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Mendoza has a strong sense of what matters. After many years of experience, he has developed a keen sense of what makes a good meal, but it’s not what one might expect.
He has run several farm-to-table dining establishments, partly by maintaining a sound devotion to the caliber of components in a dish rather than how intricately prepared it is.
“Just let the ingredients speak for themselves,” said Mendoza.
He offers using a tomato as an example of how quality cuisine flows from economy, not complexity.
“If you have a good tomato, and it’s a great tomato that’s in season, you don’t need much more than salt and pepper,” said Mendoza. “The tomato’s perfect. It is what it is.”
Mendoza believes that good food matters more than an upscale ambience. And in turn, the quality of ingredients, and of the cuisine, matters more than fancy flourishes when it comes to good food. But when it comes to a good meal, even the food isn’t paramount for Mendoza.
“What makes a good meal is really your company,” said Mendoza. “Because you can have mediocre food and still have good company and remember how great the meal was. There’s a lot of things that make a good meal; the company, the setting, what you’re eating, whatever you have going on. Food’s just one aspect.”
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering Columbia County with The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
