Raul Templonuevo, Kay’s Kitchen & Bakery
By Mike Mitchelson

When reached by phone the first time, Raul Templonuevo, executive chef and owner of Kay’s Kitchen & Bakery in St. Joseph, Minn., was frantically searching for a part for the restaurant’s air conditioner. “Can we reschedule?” he asked. “I’ve got to find this part otherwise it’s going to be 115 degrees in the restaurant.”

Sure.

The next day, Templonuevo was considerably less frantic. “I think most of the cooks lost a little weight on the line,” he said. “But we got it fixed by the afternoon.”

Yes, the life of a restaurant owner, which Templonuevo became in December 2002 when he purchased the 35 year-old diner from his former boss and mentor, Hope Clocker.

Templonuevo grew up in Hot Springs, S.D., and arrived in St. Joseph, Minn. to attend college at St. John’s University. Like many college-age restaurant workers, his job as a cook at Kay’s Kitchen was to help pay for school—for him, an art degree. Templonuevo’s plans went awry his last semester, when he studied in France. “I’ve always loved food, but never really took it seriously in terms of a career or profession,” he said. But while I was in southern France, I was in Cannes, and there was something about the way they celebrate when they eat. It doesn’t matter if it’s a snack in the afternoon, a light lunch or a huge fiesta at night. Everything is a celebration. And living it for six months, it just dawned on me that food is a lot more than nourishment.”

When he returned from France, Clocker hired him back as a cook. “I didn’t know what I was going to do, I didn’t know if I was going to be a professional photographer, and she saw that I had an interest in food—more than the simple stuff,” Templonuevo said. “She started teaching me about sauces, taking me to her garden and showing me how food comes out of the ground.”

After another year at the restaurant, Clocker suggested that Templonuevo move on to gain more kitchen experience. Clocker’s family is well entrenched in the restaurant business, and through her sister, Jewel, a Twin Cities pastry chef, Templonuevo found himself in 1999 at Woody’s Grille in Eden Prairie, working for Pat Woodring and Bob Carlson. “I lied through my teeth to get the job,” Templonuevo said. “I basically said I was the best egg guy you’ll ever find—they were opening a breakfast program and I really wanted in.”

Woodring, Carlson and then-Executive Chef Kevin Tracy were people willing to throw opportunities to employees who showed motivation, Templonuevo said. “I woke up and said, ‘I’m pretty good at this,’ and started practicing at home and getting every book I could get my hands on, and living up to the lie I created for myself,” he said, laughing. “It was a mixture of good timing and putting myself in the right place, and I moved up fairly quickly.”

After about a year, he said, he was given the breakfast and lunch programs. When the restaurant started a dinner program, Chef Tracy threw at him more opportunities, and Templonuevo eventually became kitchen manager, then sous chef. After two and a half years at the restaurant, Templonuevo was offered his biggest opportunity: Chef Tracy left for Rudolph’s, leaving an opening for the top toque. “I didn’t think I was going to get it because of my inexperience with the books and number crunching, but again, the owners like Pat and Bob, if you can step up, and I did,” he said.

Firmly entrenched in his late 20s, and having worked with several excellent chefs, Templonuevo said he began thinking about other business opportunities. “It was nice to be in that group of up and coming, progressive young men,” he said. “What I realized is that the old guard, testosterone-filled world of kitchens doesn’t work. …We’re not saving lives, and we’re not reinventing the wheel every day. It’s food. You can do it well and beautifully, and that means everything. But holistically—how you run your kitchen, how you treat your crew—I think these young guys I’ve been affiliated with who are now rising in the Twin Cities are changing it.”

Templonuevo thought about owning his own restaurant. “The big motivator for me was, I didn’t want to be a burnt-out chef when I was 35,” he said. “There’s plenty that I’ve worked for like that, (they) don’t even like cooking anymore. It’s sad. I never wanted to be that, and lose my passion for food.”

Woodring and Carlson supported his efforts, Templonuevo said. “They were a great support network.”

Enter Clocker and Kay’s Kitchen & Bakery. Clocker purchased the diner from her parents, and owned and operated it for almost 25 years, Templonuevo said, and described it as a “ma and pa joint.” “There’s something about the connection a restaurant can have with its city,” he said. “I wanted to be part of something rather than a huge machine that cranked out food. And Kay’s Kitchen had it. The history, the stories, that kind of family atmosphere that I wanted to create in a kitchen—it was already here.”

And while the restaurant is decidedly not fine dining, he’s able to put his training to use with his daily specials—only he’s learned not to be too detailed with descriptions. “I discovered that my first year, when I tried to do the whole hoity-toity write up,” he said. “I put a tilapia special up with a mango citrus salsa, soy glaze reduction, coconut infused rice, and didn’t sell one. Next night, I did the same thing, just wrote ‘fish special’ on my board, and sold 17. If it’s good and goes out on the table promptly, and the service is good, people will buy it.”

Templonuevo’s yen to create high-end food is satisfied by catering events in the St. Cloud and Twin Cities areas. “I still love the idea of having the Kay’s, but there’s something that tells me these hands can still do some stuff,” he said.

That “stuff” includes keeping an eye out for any opportunities down the road—he is only 33, after all. He might also try to introduce higher-end meals into the restaurant, but it’s a fine balancing act between keeping your regulars and scaring them off. “But, like using the avocado (here), just work it in a little bit, educate your customer,” he said. “Hold their hand along the way, so they don’t feel the restaurant is turning into a completely different entity.”