Recipe for Success: Don Depaoli

Time worked here: 3:30 a.m. until I finish Saturday through Wednesday. This is the start of my ninth year here. I wasn’t always doing pastries; I worked the savory side a number of years.

Where are you from? I grew up in Reno, Nevada.

What brought you here? This is a second career for me. In 1997, my wife, Patty Depaoli, and I found we would make a change in life. We moved to Anna Maria Island, and I had the intent of working fine dining. I was in the electrical industry for 32 years doing installation and high-voltage switchgear.

Well that’s far from fine dining — what’s your culinary background? I grew up in an Italian-American family and food was foremost in what we thought about, talked about and did. In the mid-’80s, I started taking courses at the community college for different cuisines and in the ’90s, I did some continuing education at the culinary institute … at that point I decided fine dining was where I wanted to be.

What’s your earliest memory relating to food? We always ate every Sunday at my grandmother’s house. She cooked on a wood-burning stove. There were probably about eight grandkids and then the parents and so on.

How did you get involved at Euphemia Haye? Euphemia Haye was one of our favorite restaurants. I was doing some prep cooking at Rod and Reel Pier. Ray Arpke, owner of Euphemia Haye, used to bicycle down on Sundays for coffee and we’d talk food. We’d talk back and forward, and he had an opening and asked if I wanted to give it a shot.

What’s your favorite thing you make? Pistachio olive oil cake

And rumor has it you make hot sauce on the side? I grow some incredibly hot peppers and I make sauces. I’ve been doing that for 15 years. We have used some of them. I’ve done pepper jellies, but mostly it’s the chefs eating them in the kitchen.

If you were any item on the menu, what would you be? Our dense chocolate cake. I guess because it’s intensely flavored. I can be a little dense, I suppose.

If you had to eat one item on the menu for the rest of your life, what would it be? Probably the crisp roasted duck. I like the crispy skin, the savoriness and the fact that it’s not a mainstream item in every restaurant. Not everywhere does duck and not everywhere does it well.

Your dream customer (dead or alive) comes in. He wants to meet the chef — who is it? I suppose my uncle, Robert Franks. He initially went to the California Culinary Institute and had a restaurant in San Francisco. He was one of my early inspirations. It’d be nice to have him see my food.

Describe Euphemia Haye with one song. I’m not a music man. I like a quiet kitchen.