South LA Food Diaries: Chef Turok dazzles customers with ingenious flavors
Brian Menendez, also known as Chef Turok, has worn many hats in his life: DJ, chef, writer, baker, owner of Turok’s Cheesecakes. He’s done it all.
Chef Turok’s great talent can be summed up by the origin of his nickname, “Turok,” which was given to him in high school as a nod to his artistic pursuits. He began a career in music when he was 18, at which point his name became Johnny Turok as his own homage to Johnny Carson.
“Once I started working in the kitchen it just progressed into Chef Turok, and I had a catering company called Ready Turok because I was always ready to rock a kitchen or a restaurant right on the spot,” he said.
And that right there is as true a statement as ever: Chef Turok rocks the cheesecake world.
As told by Chef Turok, his cheesecake journey began in his Salvadorian household, watching his mom in the kitchen and experimenting with different ingredients that he found around the house. He then switched paths completely and started DJing and even went on an underground hip-hop tour. On his way back from the tour, he had another desire to change his career path.
“I decided that I was going to take two weeks away from everything to figure out what I really want[ed] to do with my life. Two days after getting back from the tour, I saw a commercial for the Cordon Bleu and it just brought back everything…Within that same week I just enrolled and went right into school,” Chef Turok said.
After finishing culinary school, Chef Turok spent time as a sous chef at various restaurants. Unfortunately, one of these jobs ended with a work-related injury that took him out of the industry for four years. During that time, he decided that if he couldn’t be in the kitchen, he would do the next best thing: eat delicious foods and write about them. Because of the accident, Chef Turok had gained weight, but he says that this was an advantage in food-blogging.
“You can never trust a skinny chef so I thought I was pretty trustworthy with my size,” he said, laughing.
However, this job didn’t pay the bills, so he searched for something else.
Chef Turok contacted a friend who was selling artisanal products at a coffee shop in Boyle Heights and asked if he would sample a cheesecake.
“I told him that I make cheesecakes and if he liked them, he could sell them,” Turok said. “If not then at least I tried. So I took literally the last 50 bucks that I had to get myself to the location and I had him try them. As soon as he bit into it he literally just pointed and said ‘I want that.’ He bought what I had on hand.”
In a stroke of fate, 30 minutes later, the Los Angeles Magazine food writer and taco connoisseur Bill Esparza showed up, tried the cheesecake and also loved it. Two weeks later, Turok’s Cheesecakes was featured in the magazine. Since then, Esparza has invited Chef Turok to all the festivals he has organized.
“It was just the right place at the right time. I couldn’t have asked for anything else. So then I just kept hustling and trying to get into different places and was always on the grind,” Turok said.
The recipe for these now-famous cheesecakes was created when Chef Turok was in a cheesecake-making class at culinary school. Up until that point, he had never baked.
In fact, he walked into class that day never having even made a Betty Crocker boxed cake mix. Speaking of that fortuitous day, he said, “I went into the walk-in fridge and I saw they had the tub of mascarpone cheese there, and I asked the instructor, ‘What if I did a cheesecake with this?’’’
After one year of perfecting the recipe, Chef Turok had created his signature cheesecakes.
Unlike traditional cheesecakes which use cream cheese, Turok’s cheesecakes use mascarpone. Mascarpone is commonly said to be an Italian version of cream cheese, but so soft that it can be scooped with a plastic spoon. Although mascarpone is more costly than cream cheese, for Chef Turok its use is justified by the textural difference.
“It literally melts in your mouth as soon as you bite into it. It doesn’t stick to the roof of your mouth like a certain factory does,” he said.
Chef Turok makes his sauces and crust from scratch. Instead of just using graham crackers, he also adds almond meal into the crust to help retain moisture. In other words, as the Turok’s Cheesecakes website says, “this is the best damn cheesecake you’ll ever try.”
Two fan favorites are the sangria cheesecake and the creme brûlée cheesecake. The sangria cheesecake has a tart sauce that is generously poured over a slice, assuring that each bite is coated with the smooth flavor. Where as the sangria cheesecake stands out with contrast in flavor, the crème brûlée cheesecake contrasts in texture. The hard shell is torched in front of the customer’s eyes, and it releases smoke that turns the plating into a show.
Chef Turok creates flavors like these based on what’s in season. He also creates flavors specifically for food festivals such as Bill Esparza’s Taqueando Festival. For example, the aloha kine was developed for a food festival and pays homage to the time Chef Turok lived in Hawaii. The crust uses macadamia nuts and Hawaiian vanilla, and the cheesecake is topped with freeze-dried pineapples and strawberry chips.
Despite these ingenious flavors, Chef Turok has met customers who claim to not like cheesecake. Each time, he makes them a promise and says, “You know what, try it. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to pay for it.” Each time, the customer takes a bite and stops in their tracks, astounded. This is what he finds to be the most rewarding aspect of his business: seeing his customers’ faces the first time they take a bite of one of his cheesecakes.
In an email to the Daily Trojan regarding the pandemic, Chef Turok said he had to close shop for four months for the safety of his family and himself. He reopened in July and partnered with an additional restaurant in Uptown Whittier to carry his cheesecakes. He is taking orders for pickup and delivery, and has implemented precautions to keep his customers safe.
One day, Chef Turok hopes to have a brick-and-mortar shop from which he’d sell his cheesecakes. He also wants to be able to produce enough cheesecakes to not only supply other restaurants, but also to supply cruise ships.
For now, buyers can support Turok’s Cheesecakes by buying them at a variety of restaurants including Holbox in the Mercado La Paloma near USC and Michelin-starred Nick and Stef’s Steakhouse in downtown Los Angeles. In fact, when the owner of Nick and Stef’s first tried Chef Turok’s cheesecakes, according to Turok, he had only one thing to say: “This shit’s fucking good. And I want to sell it.”
Aside from the restaurants that sell Chef Turok’s cheesecake, his delicious creations can also be viewed on Instagram @turokscheesecakes and ordered via his website www.turokscheesecakes.com.