Embodying Cocina de Autor

Some chefs are born with a love of food and cooking and their earliest memories are of perching on a chair or ladder helping mommy cook. Erick Del Valle wasn’t one of these; infatuation hit him late and hard. 

So there he was, a high school student in Caracas, Venezuela, about to graduate, become a college major in economics, a business career carefully planned, when his father invited him to go along on a business trip. Software was the business, more specifically P.O.S. software for high-end restaurants. 

“I walked into a restaurant kitchen in the middle of the dinner rush,” recalls Erick, “and it was amazing. The chef offered me a part time job and I said ‘Okay, let’s try it out.’ And the next day, there I was cleaning a chicken and I just fell in love. My parents told me, ‘Do what you want to do, just try to do your best,’ and so I went off to cooking school at La Casserole du Chef, which was the best in Venezuela. And there, as I saw how everything fit together, I fell in love, totally and completely.”

There was a chef named Nino Graziano, whose restaurant in Sicily earned two Michelin stars. Somehow he ended up in Caracas and Erick ended up working for him. 

“One of the best chefs I ever worked for and I learned techniques I use today,” says Erick. “I would have stayed there forever, but the restaurant suddenly closed.” 

At a restaurant called DOC (no relation to Doc’s), which used only produce grown in Venezuela, Erick learned the value of fresh and local. He then moved to Argentina, worked at a sushi place, founded a catering company (he made great food but business in the slow months wasn’t enough to live on) and moved on to work at Oporto Almacen. That was a trendy, upscale, see-and-be-seen place in Buenos Aires that happened to serve excellent food. Erick continued to learn, and all that time he was going to college. 

Then came 2016. An economic collapse in Venezuela left his family unable to pay tuition, so he was forced to leave college just 8 credits short of graduation. 

Erick has a brother named Frank Cedeno who grew up in the United States and is well-known in the Tulsa food scene. “Come to Tulsa,” Frank always told him, “you’ll work hard but it’s a good life.” Erick wanted to finish college first, but it didn’t happen. 

In October of 2016, he flew to Tulsa. Three days later, he was working at Doc’s. 

“When I first came I was like a sponge,” he recalls, “soaking up knowledge, learning Cajun, learning Creole, getting inspiration from everything I saw.” 

Tim Richards was executive chef at Doc’s then. He’s known for spotting talent and fostering it, and that’s exactly what he did. Erick slowly rose in the ranks and, in 2020, became executive chef himself. 

It’s a glorious promotion, but it meant more work, not less. 

“There are no days off for me,” he says. He creates dishes, orders produce, and most days, you can still find him working with the other line cooks. If he ever gets a vacation, he wants to travel … to eat at other restaurants. 

“I want to visit New York and Chicago,” he says. “The food scene there is amazing. That’s how I get inspired to create my own dishes.” 

In Argentina, Erick learned the term “cocina de autor.” That means, Erick explains, to learn from all cooking styles but not to get trapped by any of them. To create dishes that respect the ingredients, using simple techniques that let the meat and produce shine, yet also express the chef’s unique personality. That’s what Erick does. And he loves it. 

If you’d passed by the kitchen a few minutes later, you would have seen Erick dicing potatoes, a big smile on his face, relaxed and happy, trading jokes with the other cooks on the line.