Chef Cesar Sotomayor of Cafe 37 in Ridgewood on ice cream, Whole Foods and keeping trim
NOVEMBER 12, 2014 LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2014, 1:21 AM
THE RECORD
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Cesar Sotomayor
Café 37, Ridgewood
Cesar Sotomayor, 38, owes his love of cooking to his Venezuelan roots — as a child in Caracas, his grandmother cooked for 10 family members each day. Sotomayor “grew up in the kitchen.”
A few years after his arrival in the United States in 1999, a chance meeting with chef Michael Latour at Burlington Coat Factory in Paramus landed him a spot in Latour’s Ridgewood restaurant, where Sotomayor did menial tasks such as dicing vegetables and sanitizing the kitchen, all while learning the trade.
His five years at Latour, combined with an associate’s degree in hotel and restaurant management from Bergen Community College, landed him in the head chef position at Ridgewood’s Village Green in 2007. During his six-year tenure, he established his own cooking style, and in July 2012, the Hawthorne resident opened Café 37, also in Ridgewood, serving modern American cuisine. The restaurant received 2 1/2 out of 4 stars from The Record in 2012.
Here, Sotomayor talks about Whole Foods, his weakness for ice cream, and how to stay slim when you’re surrounded by food.
https://www.northjersey.com/food-and-dining-news/dining-news/chef-cesar-sotomayor-of-cafe-37-in-ridgewood-on-ice-cream-whole-foods-and-keeping-trim-1.1131538
