Celebrated Healdsburg Chef's Unexpected Next Move: A Farm-To-Table Tent Near You

HEALDSBURG, CA — Chef Mateo Granados worked in some of the country’s most acclaimed kitchens — Michelin-starred trendsetters that defined California menus. The kitchen he now occupies has no walls and was, for a time, marked only by a handwritten sign, "Tacos Today," at the sidewalk entrance to a winery on Front Street.

Granados is there Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, under a tarp, bordered by a garden on one side and Emmitt-Scorsone Winegrowers on the other. Behind it all, runs the Russian River under the old Railroad Bridge.

There, Granados pats out homemade tortillas and browns spears cut from a baguette to make the day's specials. They change constantly, and most of the ingredients are from the garden or his farm.

It may not seem like the logical next step for an immigrant who worked his way up from being a dishwasher at restaurants like Masa’s and Dry Creek Kitchen, as well as his own shop in Healdsburg.
But Granados said he had a vision for something different, radical.

"I said to myself, I can sell tamales on the street.”

From Dishwasher To Executive Chef

Granados has always had the credentials, a blogger wrote about him 2011. He always had world-class cooking, in a signature style called “modern Yucatán,” and always had customers who thronged to his catered events and to his sit-down meals served from farmers’ market booths. "And now, he finally has the restaurant."

But in 1987, Granados arrived in the United States from Mexico and started washing dishes at Julie’s Supper Club in San Francisco. The young Granados worked 16-hour days, 7 days a week. After his shift, he'd go home and watch cooking shows like "Unique Eats" and "Man Fire Food," learning technique as well as what he wanted to avoid or emulate.

Then came Julian Serano, a Spanish-born master chef who hired him at Masa’s, a (now closed) trend-setting French restaurant in San Francisco.

"He built my career. He mentored me," Granados said.

Over time, Granados worked his way up to chef de cuisine at Masa’s. He moved to Sonoma County, where he worked in winemaking with Burt and Fred Williams Jr. at Williams Selyem and later was recruited as executive chef for Charlie Palmer's Dry Creek Kitchen.

Granados opened his own shop in 2011, Mateo’s Cocina Latina — a "Yucatan-inspired restaurant" — on Healdsburg Avenue across the street from Spoonbar, a strip of town where rock stars slip quietly in and out of restaurants like his. On his menu, he merged Mexico, California, French techniques, and his family of butchers and farmers in the Yucatán (Mayan on his mother's side, Spanish on his father's).

Granados closed his restaurant in 2021, provoking tears from young diners whose parents had made Mateo's a regular treat, according to reports from the time. The closing-night dinner gathering was nearly cancelled because, so the story goes, he could not find anyone to serve food or bus tables. Friends are said to have stepped in to help — winemaker Guy Davis of Healdsburg’s Davis Family Vineyards served customers, cleared dishes, and wiped down tables. July 26 became Mateo’s Cocina Latina Day in Healdsburg by proclamation. “We won’t say goodbye, only see you again!” he told his guests that night.

The final dinner menu included picadillo empanadas, braised whole-roasted catch of the day, and roast annatto-seed-marinated chicken with blue corn tortillas and pickled vegetables.

"It was time to continue to pursue Mateo's project," he said. "Which is what I am doing right now, growing vegetables, raising animals, creating new fundamentals for the industry."

Top Tent Chef

Michael Scorsone — the co-founder of Emmitt-Scorsone Winegrowers — said he knew Granados from Mateo's. Scorcone, also a trained chef, said he ordered a hamburger one night, took one bite, and at once invited Granados to take over the long-neglected garden on the winery's lot. There diners sit in picnic tables by the garden or with wine on the Emmitt-Scorsone Winegrowers deck.

Granados was already a practiced tent chef when the winery approached him in 2004, selling his handmade tamales in Sonoma County farmers' markets. In addition to a catering business, he ran Tendejon de la Calle (“taste of the street”), which would pop up at farms and wineries across Sonoma County. His menus were available at local farmers' markets, made with nearby growers like Preston Farm and Winery, Bernier Farms, and Laguna Farm.

When he is not tending to the kitchen side of his work, he is darting and climbing around a half-acre farm on Dry Creek Road, which supplies him with goats, ducks, chickens, greens, zucchini, carrots, olives, and so on. Granados grows, harvests, feeds, and finishes plant and animal alike. He attaches a "from" to everything else, like fish from Bodega and oysters from Drakes Bay.

Fresh, local, impeccably sourced food is not unusual for Sonoma County. It's almost a requirement.
But not everyone is ready to scale back to focus intently on an idea at a time when most celebrity chefs are ready to settle into a third act with destination restaurant-hotel chains, whose prices are beyond the means of most people living in the area.

Standing next to a refrigerated showcase he picked up from the shuttered Rite-Aid at the other end of Healdsburg, Granados ran through a fever list of plans for his new business. He turned a shed next to his cooking tent into a small store selling dehydrated vegetables from his garden, like crackling shishito peppers, and "El Yuca", Mayan habanero sauce made from his chilis and already sold in stores like Big John's. From time to time, he returns to a restaurant kitchen as a "chef in residence," most recently at Spoonbar in early February. He served dishes like wild mushroom soup, butternut squash lasagna, and a chicken potpie for two.

But Granados said that for two years, he has been working away from celebrity kitchens toward a different vision where every creation is unique and is limited to only what is produced in the here and now.

"It may be something available only once a year, and you can't have it until next season. Everything is as fresh as it can get," he said.

Granados said he believes this is the best part of his career yet.

Mateo's outdoor kitchen is at 52 Front St. Enter through the Emmitt-Scorsone Winegrowers driveway and look for a small shed and tent.