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While his mother, Ellie, is slicing lemons in the kitchen at the Vault Restaurant, seven-year-old Kade Quintana stands next to her on a chair as he helps his father, Drew, prepare Chicken Piccata by peeling wrappers off cubes of butter. It is a sentimental callback for Drew—he first became interested in cooking by helping his own father, Orlando, prepare weekend feasts.
“As soon as I was old enough to peek over the counter,” Drew said, “I was helping him mix up brown sugar and soy sauce for marinades. The sound of the metal fork whisking against the bowl always intrigued me.”
While Kade is just starting his culinary quest, Drew and Ellie have a combined 34 years of food and wine experience between them, starting with Drew’s first job—as a server at the very place he now uses as a prep kitchen.
“I was working right here in the Vault,” he said. “I was going to school so I could only work weekends and days when there was not football or baseball.”
Working his way up in the trade, he spent seven years working in Pebble Beach, which helped define his goals.
“What I want to bring to San Benito County,” he said, “was some of the stuff I learned working for the best chefs I worked with over there, bringing in their styles and their techniques. I think Hollister is just so used to Mexican food and pizza.”
The Quintanas opened Fresh Direct in early January, but they spent the previous six months refining their approach by catering to their friends.
“They would call me up,” he said, “and they’d say, ‘Can you do a rack of ribs,’ and then we started on a small scale, with six to 10 families a week.” Within a month, they have close to 70 regular clients.
Ellie, who handles pretty much everything outside of the cooking, says that, so far, social media and word of mouth have been all they have needed to grow the business.
“Almost all of our customers have come from someone else that has ordered from us,” she said. “The best advertising we can have is someone hearing about us first hand from a friend.”
Fresh Direct offers two different deliveries each week. On Mondays, the Fresh Direct Fusion program offers a single option full meal that is scalable in terms of portions: the small feeds two to three people, the medium feeds four to five people and the large feeds six to eight people. Previous offerings include chicken fettuccine Alfredo, peppercorn-crusted beef tenderloin and udon stir fry.
On Wednesdays, they offer the Fresh Direct Fit menu with at least four dishes to choose from three different tiers. The Elite selection offers upscale dinners like New York steak or Mahi-Mahi, and the Signature selection offers items like grilled chicken, tri-tip, and miso-glazed salmon.
There is also a vegetarian menu that, in the past, featured Thai vegetable curry, eggplant Parmesan and pasta primavera. A kid’s menu offers a smaller portion of one of the week’s Signature selections.
There are also special offerings, which are announced on their Fusion Instagram page. These have included a seafood boil, a bounty that includes Alaskan king crab legs, lobster tails, jumbo shrimp and andouille sausage, as well as prime rib dinners.
Being able to unleash his creativity as he plans the week’s variety of choices is, according to Quintana, one of the reasons he loves his new business.
“It is like being an artist with a blank canvas,” Quintana said. “There are so many things to work with, so many ingredients and ethnic backgrounds. And I get to make them my own and make them into my own story.”
The Dishes of Fresh Direct Fit and Fusion
Chicken Piccata – An elegantly simple dish, pan-fried chicken is served with a lemon butter caper sauce with shallots and white wine served over bucatini pasta. They prepared 40 portions of this dish the day I visited, using over 120 lemons in the process. Even with that proportion, the sauce was smooth, balanced and delicate. The chicken breast itself was huge and beautifully melt-in-your-mouth tender. Even though I was reheating the packaged dish, as it would have been delivered to a customer, the breading on the chicken still had some crunch to it, and the pasta reheated perfectly without getting tough. This was my favorite of the dishes I tried.
Vegetarian Green Chili Enchilada – Served on a bed of pinto beans, organic corn tortillas are wrapped around sharp green chilis and creamy Monterey Jack cheese. There is just enough heat to light up the back of your throat and the addition of kale gives the dish some welcome tooth to the soft beans. This dish is flavorful and surprisingly filling.
Beef Fajita Bowl – Grilled sirloin steak on a bed of pinto beans with peppers and onions, served with chipotle crema. Well-seasoned, I preferred the steak on its own without the chipotle sauce because of the rich flavor of the Harris Ranch meat and the counterpoint offered by the sparklingly fresh local vegetables. I liked this one a lot—it was simple, but the presentation and the colors were very appealing.
BBQ Chopped Chicken – With roasted sweet potatoes and vegetable medley. I really enjoyed the light, sweet sauce on this dish and thought it harmonized very well with the sweet potatoes. I can see why this was also the kid’s menu item for that week. Well-worth checking out when it comes back up on the menu.
Fresh Santa Cruz Cod – Seared, with lemon and dill, served with green beans and roasted potatoes. Similar in style to the piccata, this had a more peppery bite to it. Even though it was being reheated in a microwave, the large and meaty portion of fish still packed an abundance of flavor, and the sauce kept it nicely moist. Sourced from Ocean2Table, I don’t think you will find fresher-tasting fish around here unless you cook it yourself.
Recommendations for future Eat, Drink, Savor articles can be emailed to roberteliason@benitolink.com.
BenitoLink thanks our underwriters, Hollister Super and Windmill Market, for helping to expand the Eat, Drink, Savor series and give our readers the stories that interest them. Hollister Super (two stores in Hollister) and Windmill Market (in San Juan Bautista) support reporting on the inspired and creative people behind the many delicious food and drink products made in San Benito County. All editorial decisions are made by BenitoLink.
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