New Chef, Richard Serna
Tanque Verde Ranch welcomes our new Chef, Richard Serna. We are over-enthused by Chef Serna’s history, techniques, and work ethic and cannot wait to see the extraordinary things to come. As TVR’s new Chef, Serna will be responsible for overseeing the Tanque Verde Guest Ranch’s Dining Room, including the Kiva Dining Room, along with The Dog House menu, both breakfast and lunch buffets, and Wrangler’s Brunch on Sundays. You will also find Serna taking on banquets, catering, staffing, and employee dining. Throughout all these locations, Serna will be working on menu developments, recipe developments, testing of foods, and ordering and inventory.
Richard Serna has great motivation for his journey at the Tanque Verde Ranch. It holds the perfect opportunity for his personal goals as well as making the Ranch better than what it already is. Chef Serna is excited to share experience and knowledge to new staff as well as taking in everything there is to learn about the Ranch. With Chef’s energetic personality he is known to bring out the best in people, which is all around what our guests love to see.
“To be on top of your game, one must always make the effort to learn new ways or techniques to stay one foot ahead,” Richard said.
Richard Serna has great history with Cottonwood Tucson, a rehabilitation center. Here, Serna redefined the culinary program to what it is today and took on all kinds of culinary developments including menu creation, banquets, the hiring of staff, and recipe implementation for cooking demonstrations.
Tanque Verde Ranch appealed to Chef Serna by the welcoming ambiance of the big and beautiful property. Serna has come across several ideas that have stricken his motivation to bring light of Tanque Verde’s culinary challenges. Serna looks forward to the various changing of pace while being in different working stations from outside Cowboy Cookouts, the weekly events that take place at Old Homestead, and of course, working with all new equipment and development of the new Event Barn coming in 2019. Chef Serna has already been underway with several different projects and is off to wonderous and delicious enhancements. And the fact that Serna is surrounded by horses only fuels his day-to-day tasks.
“Where can you go to work and pet a horse before your shift?!” Serna smiled and laughed. “I get to do it every day, and every day, it makes my day.”
During Chef Serna’s free time you can find him working on home improvement projects, watching movies, or catching up on the recent games of the LA Dodgers Baseball and the Lakers Basketball. And of course, Serna enjoys educating himself on the newest cooking trends and techniques. He also has a history of building big ice blocks into beautiful sculptures. Hopefully, the Ranch will be able to cater to that hobby sometime soon!
Tanque Verde Ranch is overjoyed to welcome another ambitious and hardworking chef. There are so many great things coming to the Ranch, and Chef Richard Serna is one of the first. “Welcome Chef” to the Ranch and we look forward to your flavors and fun.
