‘Old West’ provides backdrop for chef

There’s nothing like an Arizona spring to breathe life into the Old West, and few who do it as flavorfully as Chef Jon Anderson.

Anderson is the executive chef at Rawhide Western Town at Wild Horse Pass. On any given day he can be found tending to mesquite-grilled steaks and fixings, adding his personal touch. Business is probably busiest, however, during the early months of the year.

“This is the season for us, February, March and April, when it is nice out,” Jon Anderson said of the dusty streets lined with rugged, wooden store fronts and folks dressed in cow town apparel. “This is when we do our business; it’s good.”

According to its Web site, “Rawhide Western Town & Steakhouse is celebrating 35 years of providing quality 1880’s style family entertainment. This authentic frontier town is Arizona’s largest western-themed attraction and has moved from Scottsdale to Wild Horse Pass on the Gila River Indian Community.”

Jon Anderson, who joined the Starwood property about two-and-a-half years ago, said he has spent half of that time at Rawhide’s steakhouse. Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide operates the property for the Gila River Indian Community.

“With anything, you add your own flair,” he said. In this case, it takes the form of using roasted garlics and adding extra herbs. “You incorporate a lot of ingredients and there are global accents that come into some of the same things you do here, on more of a casual level,” Anderson added.

Before moving to Arizona, Anderson and his wife, Gina Anderson, lived in California with their now-9-year-old son, Connor Anderson. During five of his years there he worked with Disney as an executive banquet chef in the Grand California Hotel and at Paradise Pier.

He also worked his magic with food at the Auberge Du Souil, a small, world-class hotel in the Napa Valley, north of San Francisco. The exclusive, 100-room hotel prides itself on providing a fine dining experience, Jon Anderson said.

“I’ve done the full gamut from fine dining to the big companies, such as Disney, to working at Rawhide,” the 42-year-old Wisconsin native said. “It is kind of a fun, down-to-earth place to work, I guess.”

Anderson earned his chef’s credentials at Johnson and Wales, in Providence, R.I. He worked briefly in Rhode Island, then in Massachusetts before moving on to jobs in Florida and then in Colorado.

“You kind of make the rounds in this kind of business,” he said. “This takes you all over the place.”

The transient nature of his work has apparently not affected the career of his wife who teaches in the Chandler School District.

“Every place we go she seems to pick up a great teaching job,” he said.

It also doesn’t seem to have put a damper on his son’s spirits.

“He wants to be a chef when he grows up,” Jon Anderson said.

One might not expect someone who cooks for a living to put the apron back on once he gets home, but Jon Anderson said he still does so fairly often.

“I do a lot of the cooking, but not as much as when I was younger,” he said. “I don’t do as much of the crazy cooking as far as presentation and that. It is more family-style cooking.”

When it’s his turn to feed the family he likes to prepare anything Mediterranean.

As for Gina Anderson, “She has 15 things she does,” he said. “She rotates through those things.”

Jon Anderson said what he likes to cook is largely based on what he likes to eat.

“I think what people like to eat is what they are good at with in the kitchen.”

Submitted photo

See related recipe on Page 16 of the March/April issue of 85239 The Magazine.