Cooking with Style series: Fresh Beats with Erik Carrido

The Guardsman

Alex Schmaus

City College culinary student Erik Carrido can be found every last Friday of the month spinning records at Soul Kitchen: Fresh Beats Served, a party in an old speak-easy on 139 8th St. at Minna.

Corrido loves putting his own sense of style into the food he prepares. “What I like to spin comes out in my food,” he says.

When he isn’t spinning hip-hop, funk and soul records, Carrido can likely be found studying on campus, interning at the innovative Japanese restaurant Ozumo or working as a line cook at the Cliff House.

Carrido gets “instant gratification” from feeding and nurturing everyday people.

“Not only rich people should have access to good food. In a rich-ass country this shouldn’t be a problem, but it is. I wanna do elevated food for the common people,” says Carrido.

Carrido says he is inspired by family traditions in the kitchen. “Grandmother’s grandfather was a cook for an English nobleman, so she used to say cooking was in my blood. Grandma did catering platters, big trays of Filipino food — she had her own little hustle. She would have us help her make lumpia.”

Lumpia are stuffed pastry rolls that are served in both fried and fresh versions.

Carrido gives a positive endorsement to City College’s culinary program.

“They teach you about food costs and the business side,” he says. “City doesn’t prepare you for every kitchen, but you can go into a kitchen and not look like a dumb-ass. They teach the technical jargon, the main thing is adaptability and they teach that.”

He says he is happy to be, “expanding my horizon and learning a new cooking philosophy” at his Ozumo internship.

“I was looking at internship list,” says Carrido. “It was very American and Eurocentric. I wanted to expand my technique. I was looking for Japanese because it has an elegance in food preparation and ingredient quality.”

“And they taught me how to portion huge pieces of fish,” he added.

His favorite dish at Ozumo is hotate with uni risotto, yuzu jalapeno oil and more uni. Hotate and uni are Japanese for scallop and sea urchin, yuzu is a Japanese citrus fruit and risotto is a class of traditionally Italian dishes of rice cooked in broth to a creamy consistency.