Carlos Salgado, executive chef and co-founder behind Taco María, has always had a knack for the unexpected.
His early professional years, right after culinary school in San Francisco, saw him accidentally become a pastry chef at such joints as Winterland and Coi (he had wanted to be a cook, but switched gears upon learning they needed a new pastry chef), before he helped James Syhabout launch Commis in Oakland. Then, after moving back home to Orange County with his wife and business partner, Emilie, came Taco María in 2013. Their Costa Mesa eatery, an offshoot of his food truck, which honed in on Mexican cuisine (Salgado’s parents came to the U.S. from Mexico), racked up accolades galore (four years of consecutive Michelin stars, repeated James Beard nominations for Best Chef and plenty of best-of ink) and, far better, acclaim from diners.
Then, in July 2023, Carlos and Emilie decided to close their lauded Mexican restaurant.
So, what’s happened since then? As first reported in the Los Angeles Times, Salgado revealed to columnist Gustavo Arellano that he and his family, which includes a young daughter and son, packed up and decamped to the rather unexpected locale of Door County, Wisconsin.
When asked why he and Emilie left Orange County, the answer, as he explained, proved to be honest and deeply human. Steering a Michelin-starred critical darling like Taco María, he said, was “incredibly intense, and honestly, on a personal and creative level, dysregulating.”
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Salgado spoke frankly about the carousel of events and tertiary duties that come with such ascendancy. In the restaurant scene, “You know, there is a persistent schedule of award ceremonies and events and an endless stream of parties seeking your attention in one way or another.”
While he’s rightly proud of Taco María’s achievements — the late food critic Jonathan Gold opined, “Salgado has propelled California-Mexican cooking into the jet stream of abstracted modernist cuisine,” proclaiming Taco María his restaurant of the year in 2018 — a critical ingredient was missing from that decade: “self-directive personal growth.” Salgado felt he and his wife were “riding a wave of something much bigger than us.” In that blur, he said he couldn’t quite pin down his creative or personal compass, let alone define what a mature Carlos, a husband and a father, should be aiming for. “I wasn’t always able to focus on what my personal goals were,” he said.
Then came the pandemic, a forced pause that, in an ironic twist, became a new lifeline. The lockdown era shoved the couple into a new reality and forced them to rethink everything, allowing them to hit the reset button on their priorities.
“We started to realize that there might be different ways of doing the work that we’ve been doing,” he explained, noting that the two were able to spend more time together as a family. “Our priorities were different than what we’d had during the earlier years of Taco María, so it created this space for us to wistfully imagine how else we might want to live as restaurateurs and as parents.”
More time with their young son and, later, the arrival of their daughter, solidified their decision. Was another decade locked into a “food court” their gastronomic destiny? “We began to question whether digging in to do another 10 years at a food court was what we wanted creatively,” he said.
In lieu of signing a new lease, they opted for a retreat with a clear mission statement: get “proximate to nature” and closer to Emilie’s family, a long-held goal. Likening it to Victorian novel characters seeking to be “revived and healed by the fresh air,” Salgado said of their move, which happened in October 2023, “In truth, that was the intention, to be near evergreens and fresh water and four seasons, to try a completely different environment, to see how we liked it.”
What they discovered in Door County, near where Emilie was raised, sounds downright magical.
“I know that I loved trees, but I didn’t know that they would become a core part of my person, or that an affection for them would be so powerful,” Salgado said. What’s more, their kids have embraced the outdoors environs, with spotting deer and foraging becoming adolescent highlights. “My son is excellent at spotting morels and chanterelles,” he added.
“It’s a lovely and welcoming place,” he said of Door County, noting that it’s a welcoming community, a haven for artists (like potters, painters and jewelers), filled with galleries, outdoor Shakespeare and a lively arts scene. “Door County is like a community of artists,” he said.
Now, the two are gearing up to unveil their new culinary outpost, La Sirena (The Siren), in a matter of weeks. A more modest affair than Taco María, their new eatery is nestled in a charming building overlooking Lake Michigan. Salgado says that nearby Peninsula State Park is where he likes to spend time, a place where he can literally forage for dinner. “Across the water is Peninsula State Park, a beautiful evergreen and mixed-woods woods where, during this part of summer, I can go and pick up some chanterelles for dinner.”
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Will he ever return to the Golden State? You bet. While others have conspicuously left California for reasons, dubious or otherwise, Salgado says he and his wife left for family and to see what’s next. After all, Salgado still sees himself as a “student” and a “line cook” who understands “our best work is still ahead of us.”
Salgado, who grew up in Orange, and Emilie maintain deep roots in Orange County. “I can’t imagine being away from my family and from the produce and all of the farmers that I had the privilege to work with for so many years,” he said. Their long-term plan is to be “bi-coastal.” Door County’s seasonal rhythm offers the opportunity to pop back to Orange County during the off-season. “We have every intention of coming back, and it might be seasonal,” he said. And the ultimate goal is for their kids to be “of both places.”
He says he will miss many things about Orange County. Beyond the obvious family ties, he spoke of the people, like “the scrappy Orange County kids, the opening team” who converged at Taco María, exploring their immigrant and Mexican heritage. And then, of course, the region’s produce and fruit. Salgado waxed poetic about California’s “singular and extraordinary” soil, climate and the “creative and really dedicated farmers.” As he put it, they “make it very, very easy to be a great chef in California, when you’re starting with the best produce on Earth.”