Culinary Federation Honors Chef Pablo Mellín of Roy’s, Kicks Up Outreach to Mostly-Mexican Workforce

Maybe it’s the misty Pebble Beach sunset that makes everything taste like the ocean, but it’s a rare cocktail hour when finger food is this fresh.

Shrimp ceviche, served with a crispy plantain sliver to balance textures, tastes like a swim in the sea. It enjoys obvious traditional Mexican inspiration, with diced jalapeño and jicama. The California rolls have a similarly briny crunch, but even the Japanese staple has a Latino flair, with a spicy aioli that could be applied to fish tacos.

That’s no accident. Chef Pablo Mellín, who oversees a vast fusion menu at Roy’s in the Inn at Spanish Bay, chose the fare for last week’s cocktail hour to click thematically with the Monterey County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce event honoring him.

“When they told me to cook my own food, I said, ‘That’s discrimination,’” Mellín quipped to the crowd.

The joke was especially appropriate given the chamber’s new effort to recognize the predominantly Hispanic workforce in the area’s food industry. Mellín was unanimously voted chef of the year by the Central Coast chapter of the American Culinary Federation – and now the federation is making Mellín’s dishwasher-to-chef story its own spin on rags-to-riches tales of upward mobility for local Mexican-American cooks.

Mellín grew up in Rio Nexpa, a small coastal city in Michoacan. “You only surf, eat and have fun,” Mellín says of his hometown, where fresh fish and fruit dominate local plates. At 18, knowing no English, Mellín followed a sister to Seaside and took the first job he could get, washing dishes at Hog’s Breath Inn in Carmel in 1986.

“I started as a dishwasher, but in the back of my mind, I didn’t want to stick to washing dishes,” he says.

He eventually got a job bussing tables at the Sardine Factory. When he joined the staff at Roy’s in 1995 as a cook, it was a second job to help support his six children. He moved up to a supervisor position, then sous chef, then chef de cuisine five years ago.

Now Mellín presides over an array of sauces in a rainbow of colors. There are no fewer than 22, made fresh daily – by a workforce that’s about half Hispanic.

“I come in here, and my sauces are already done,” he says. “People only see the chef and talk about the chef, but in the back, we have the people doing the hardest jobs.”

“I proved to these guys we can do it,” Mellín adds. “Push yourself to learn.”

That’s exactly the message Tene Shake, president of the Central Coast chapter of the culinary federation and owner of Isabella’s, hopes to convey. Shake greets Mellín with a hug as the two sit down over coffee at Roy’s to discuss a handout Shake has drafted for Spanish translation.

“Hispanic chefs becoming increasingly prominent in American cooking,” the flier reads.

Shake wants to recruit more ACF members, and also to bolster the bench of future chefs. “Pablo ignited a fire with other line cooks and sous chefs, saying, ‘Look, if he can do it, I can do it,’” Shake says.

An estimated 70 percent of Central Coast restaurant staff are Latino, and Shake aims to use that stat to create a model ACF recruitment program for the rest of the county. Folks were buzzing about improved bilingual material and career path guidance for Latinos at the ACF’s national convention in Las Vegas a couple of months ago, Shake says.

The local chapter plans to launch honors for sous chefs and line cooks, similar to Mellín’s chef-of-the-year status, Shake says.

Mellín spent 23 years getting to his position as chef de cuisine, where he occupies a spot at the front of the kitchen, from where he can ladle sauces and look over the dining room – and also the sunset and the surf breaking at Spanish Bay.

The view here isn’t subtle, and neither are the flavors. It’s in his sauces, Mellín says, that his Mexican culinary influence can be most acutely tasted: a chipotle-based glaze, rather than a basil pesto, on the crusted pork chop ($28.25), and generous squeezes of fresh lime juice over almost all of the sushi rolls ($18-24).

Before he started at Roy’s, the first California outpost of the Hawaiian-fusion franchise created by celebrity Chef Roy Yamaguchi, Mellín didn’t even know what sushi was.

Now his sauces reflect flavors from all over the globe. Like the jammy, sweet plum sauce for the Chinatown-style crispy duck ($28) and the sake-miso butter sauce for shrimp dumplings ($13.50), which betrays Mellín’s fondness for citrus.

“I grew up in a village, cooking with what you have,” he says. He still cooks that way in his Prunedale home, where he grows chiles, cilantro, apples and corn.

“Here, almost everyone comes from a little village,” he says of his Latino peers. “They’re not scared, but they don’t have the opportunity – yet.”

ROY’S is located at 2700 17 Mile Dr., Pebble Beach. 647-7500, www.roysrestaurant.com