At Home in Sheila's Kitchen

When Bertha Medina says her son, Ivan, has “always had a natural love of food” from when he was a small child, you believe her. Especially when Ivan tells you about the over 130 cookbooks he owns—each one special in its own way—and how as a child he loved cooking with his mom and watching TV cooking shows with her. Not surprisingly, some very non-kid-like ingredients, ones even adults call “an acquired taste,” captivated him at a young age.

Now the executive chef of his parents’ restaurant Sheila’s Wine Bar & Café in Camarillo, Ivan tells the story of being 9 years old and seeing a cooking show’s judges delightedly eating caviar. “I just saw their eyes sparkle and they were talking about this popping sensation, so I thought [the candy] Pop Rocks! I love candy, so I asked my mom if we could get some caviar and she thought I was crazy,” he says.

But they headed to World Market to buy some anyway, because his mom is supportive that way. “It was an experience I’ll never forget,” says the 25-year-old chef. “I did love [the caviar].”

Then there was the escargot for his 12th birthday dinner at the now-shuttered Matteo’s restaurant in Camarillo.

Throughout this life, family dinners and cooking with his parents are constant themes. When his parents purchased Sheila’s in 2007, Ivan would do his homework at the restaurant, gravitating to the kitchen to see what was going on.

It was natural that as a teen, he started working in the pantry station at Spanish Hills Country Club. “Even though I was getting things from the fridge and throwing them into the oven or plating, I just loved the fast-paced environment,” he says. “Everyone was having a good time around the food. Food brings people together and is just so amazing to watch that I decided this is a career I wanted.”

In Sheila’s kitchen, his father, Pablo, taught him how to make things like pasta, sauces and chicken stock. Encouraging him even more, Pablo let him create a weekend menu special. Ivan rose to the challenge by buying books and teaching himself new dishes and techniques.

“I was just reading and trying and failing, and failing and trying, and learning and just getting better and better at it. I just kind of taught myself how to mirror flavors together using different techniques,” he says. One of his go-to books was The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America’s Most Imaginative Chefs, published in 2008.

The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in Napa was the next step in forging his culinary career. It was there that he learned classic French techniques, the value of seasonal foods and the importance of reducing food waste.

Ivan likes to shop at Underwood Family Farms in Somis and the Camarillo Certified Farmers’ Market on Saturday mornings before heading into work. “Whatever’s in season definitely has an influence on what I do with the menu,” he says.

He once read that it’s a chef ’s duty to buy the produce consumers don’t want, something that resonated with him. So he likes to incorporate produce on the shoulders of a season that consumers have left behind in favor of the new season’s darlings. He also seeks out the “ugly fruit” that people might pass over because it’s not pristine. He shows me a plum with a scar, and as he slices it notes how it’s beautiful on the inside. The fruit’s minor imperfection won’t be seen on the colorful duck entrée he’s making.

“There’s a shift in the cheffing world to reduce food waste,” he says. “It’s all about feeding people. In cooking school they emphasize it a lot, saying we are the future of food.”

So he reduces food waste in the kitchen by using vegetable trimmings in stock, he says, a stockpot burbling on the stove in the background. Alternatively, he purées vegetables to use in sauces or dehydrates them for pasta dough.

“We need to protect land and farming now,” he says, adding that he enjoys seeing the farmland in the county. “I’m a small part in the big picture. I can only do my part.”

Ivan, who likes to eat healthfully and live a healthy lifestyle, is looking to winter for dishes like scallops with brassicas. He talks about pork chops and duck, and incorporating squashes and roasted beets in dishes.

“I always bring in something that’s maybe a little bit more unusual [like wild boar or elk],” he says, to broaden people’s palates. “I prepare it in a familiar way so it’s more accessible to people,” he adds.

When he says that cooking gives him a chance to nourish people, he’s talking about the restaurant’s customers, his fiancée Brittany McKinnon and his family.

“It’s a blessing to get to work with my parents,” he says, adding, “maybe my being here and my work ethic will make it a little easier for them and that’s important to me.”