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HARLINGEN — The flavors of Italy have gathered to share their wonders with anyone hungry for flavor, intrigue and variation.
In the walls of Laurel Park Bistro the flavors from the place in Italy called Florence avail themselves first with their names.
The Ortaggio. The Caprese, the Genovese, the Pavarotti.
These names are listed under the heading “Herb Focaccia Sandwiches,” and they are names lovely enough by the nature of their sound to capture the imaginations of the customers.
The customers at Laurel Park at 901 S. 77 Sunshine Strip may immediately ask themselves, “What is focaccia? What does ortaggio mean? And prosciutto and stracciatella and pecorino crème?
Chef Diego Benitez and his manager, Julie Ng, will be happy to tell you, making this a place of learning Italian words and their meanings as well as a place of tastes from the city of Florence. This city is the capital city of the area in Italy called Tuscany.
The city of Florence in Italy is known as the birthplace of the High Renaissance in the early 1500s. Michelangelo and Donatello and Raphael all hailed from that city.
However, there is more to Florence than Michelangelo and Donatello and Raphael as Benitez and Julie will tell you.
“I’ve been to Florence,” Julie said. “Before we changed into this business with this menu, we were doing pretty much fine dining, dinners, on Sunday. We switched in January.”
“The market was driven more to casual food,” Benitez said.
Julie the manager explained that she and Benitez, who she referred to as simply “Chef,” were doing fine dining and Sunday brunch.
“We were ready to make a chef, like Chef was saying,” she explained.
The building called Laurel Park Bistro sits on a busy thoroughfare through Harlingen, but it was constructed as a home in a quieter time by a man who had just returned home from World War II. Laurel Park Bistro today, having been retrofitted now with a kitchen, has a quiet elegance with white walls and wine bottles of French and German and New Mexico design standing along the walls.
Music with calming instrumentals and the unmistakable lilting voice of Billie Holiday fills the room. A man and a woman speak casually with Julie and the man says they were just in Italy and the woman raises her sandwich and says, “This is better than what we got over there.”
“We’ll be back,” says the man, and there is the strong indication that this is their first visit — but definitely not the last.
Julie now selects a bottle of Los Vascos from Chile and a Gruet from New Mexico and takes them into the kitchen to be chilled. It is in this kitchen just two days earlier where several youngsters took a cooking class and learned how to make marshmallows. This is one of many classes taught regularly at Laurel Park Bistro.
“We’ve got graham crackers, we’ve got coconut, we’re melting the chocolate,” said Margeaux Loya, who just graduated from high school and is already flexing her culinary skills.
The children wide-eyed and fidgety crowded around the table where blocks of white marshmallow waited to be dressed in whatever attire the children chose.
“I want coconut,” said Kai Desai, 6.
Margeaux slapped her hands on the table waiting for the chocolate. All the children slapped the table too.
“We’re playing Simon Sez,” Margeaux said.
“Simon Sez don’t touch the stove,” Kai said.
The kids learned that chocolate is melted in a double boiler and they must be careful not to burn the chocolate, and everyone laughed as Diego revealed that he himself had messed up on the chocolate and would have to do it again.
Laurel Park Bistro serves up a wealth of experience collected over the lifetime of one Chef Diego Benitez. The Harlingen native left high school early and earned is GED before joining the U.S. Navy in response to 9/11. He served as a Navy corpsman while visiting foreign ports where he explored the local cuisine — Japan, Australia, India — and through the hands-one approach he acquired vast experiences.
“Because of my background working as a teenage kid at a restaurant, I was already very interested in food and cooking,” said Benitez, 44. “Everywhere I went I was trying to taste and sample different foods.”
Benitez has always loved cooking but he became even more intrigued by this art while working at a restaurant on South Padre Island.
“The chef was a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York,” he said. “I think that’s the first time I saw a true chef, a real chef, a chef who commanded his kitchen, who was a walking encyclopedia of culinary knowledge.”
He followed his mentor’s footsteps. The Navy provided the funds for him to attend also the Culinary Institute of America where he earned first earned his associate’s degree. During the Navy he had saved a substantial amount of money, so after he earned his associates he traveled to Germany and worked in stages (stah-zhing), unpaid internships in restaurants. He returned to culinary school to earn his bachelor’s degree in cooking, and did more stages.
Returning to the Valley he entered another stage, pronounced in the more familiar way, with casual food and fine wine and Japanese beer and an ambience that can only be describe as elegant.
It is a quiet elegance and relaxed elegance, not stiff or formal or intimidating, Rather, it’s a relaxing and calming elegance, an inviting elegance where diners can enjoy sandwiches with prosciutto ham and cheeses called pecorino Romano and stracciatella.
