Jonathon Lucero has three loves in life: cooking, driving and fishing. It’s all he’s done for the past few years.

Lucero started 2020 helping to prepare millions of dollars worth of food for the Super Bowl in Miami, then his executive chef position at a Virginia aquarium was cut due to the pandemic, prompting a months-long fishing trip that would be the envy of many anglers. Now, his journey has brought him to Northwest College, where he’s serving as Sodexo’s executive chef.

Lucero oversees the entire kitchen operation for The Hub, The Trap and Dining Hall at Northwest College’s DeWitt Student Center, as well as the college’s catering service.

Lucero started in the position this semester, and he said he’s received a lot of compliments on the improved quality. They’ve also seen the number of purchased meals nearly double during breakfast, lunch and dinner. Lucero doesn’t take a lot of the credit for that, though. 

“That all goes to my cooks,” he said. “They’re doing the cooking. They’re running it.” 

Lucero makes sure the cooks have the product and equipment they need, and that they’re working safely. His style of kitchen management is to let the cooks use their own knowledge to direct the operation. 

Having jumped right into the position as the spring semester started, Lucero has been planning menus. There are four menus every weekday, and then a few more for brunch and dinner on the weekends. They run on a five-week cycle. Once he gets the menus in place, Lucero said he’ll step out into the kitchen more and do some mentoring and fine tuning. 

After mentioning that the NWC food service is open to the public, he boasts, “I’m going to say it: We have the best food in the state of Wyoming coming out of this kitchen.” 

Lucero concedes he hasn’t spent much time in Wyoming, but the pride he takes in the kitchen shows. 

Love-hate

Lucero grew up in the Antelope Valley east of Los Angeles, in the Californian cities of Palmdale and Lancaster. 

His childhood, he said, was filled with poverty. Both of Lucero’s parents struggled with drug addiction. While his father, Daniel Lucero, has been sober since 1994, his mother would struggle with her addictions until her death a couple years ago. 

Lucero’s stepmother, Melissa Lucero, turned him on to cooking. She’s currently a chef, running a winery in Sacramento.

His initial career interest, however, was law enforcement. After several years in the military, Lucero had planned to go into corrections. But after all his training was complete, a hiring freeze brought those plans to a screeching halt. Six months later, the California Department of Corrections asked him to reapply, but he decided the career didn’t offer the kind of job security he was seeking. So, Lucero sold his car, quit the three jobs he was working, and went to study at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. 

After graduation, he went to work for Centerplate, Inc., eventually working his way up to run the exclusive, members-only Gotham Club at San Francisco’s Oracle Park. All the former players of the San Francisco Giants (plus the New York Gothams and New York Giants) are club members for life, with season ticket holders and others able to join.

“I got to see a lot of cool athletes, like Hank Aaron and Tommy Lasorda,” Lucero said.

Still, he described himself as having a love-hate relationship with San Francisco.

In the six years Lucero lived in the city, he said he paid $180,000 in rent, plus $50,000 in tuition for culinary school. All things considered, though, Lucero said his San Francisco experience was a good one. 

“It’s not the nicest city to live in, but food-wise, it’s just phenomenal,” he said. He added that, “if you can cook in San Francisco or New York and make it, you can cook anywhere, because those are the two meccas of food in the United States.”

In the winter of 2016, Lucero got a promotion and moved to Nashville, Tennessee. There he worked for three seasons at First Horizon Park, the home of the Nashville Sounds — the Triple A affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers. Lucero served as the garde-manger, in charge of cold food, like chilled soups, fruit, salads and pates. He also helped with a gourmet concession stand and catered picnics of up to 6,000 people. 

Settling down

Lucero’s had other adventures along the way — like when he ran the kitchen last year for Super Bowl LIV in Miami, Florida. There, he oversaw the cooking for $3 million worth of food. His day started at 3 a.m. and didn’t finish until 10 p.m., being so busy he didn’t even know who won the game. Lucero said he had a great crew to work with, which made it a great gig, but it was a challenging job. 

“I don’t want to ever work the Super Bowl again,” he said. “It was rough.”

Lucero went on to work as the executive chef at the Virginia Beach Aquarium & Marine Science Center in Norfolk, Virginia. Due to the COVID pandemic, however, that organization pulled out of their contract with Sodexo, leaving Lucero without any work. 

So, he hopped in his car and went on a three-month fishing trip. He cast his line in Virginia, Tennessee, Ohio, Montana, Idaho, California and Oregon, which he said had some of the best fishing.

Lucero said he either slept in his car or got hotel rooms late in the day, when rates online would plummet; he got to stay in some nice hotels for cheap. 

Lucero ultimately stopped in Billings, Montana, where he started working for Sodexo at Rocky Mountain College. His general manager there knew he was overqualified for the position, Lucero said, so he recommended him for the executive chef position at NWC. 

It all happened quickly, and so for the first two weeks in Pow-
ell, he lived at the Super 8 with his cat. He now has an apartment at Trapper Village West. 

“It’s really the cat’s apartment. I’m barely ever there,” he said.

Like many others across the country who are shirking off the challenges of metropolitan life for the easier, safer, and more affordable life of small town America, Lucero said he’s finding a comfortable place here in Powell.

Though he spent his childhood in Los Angeles and his career took him to some big cities, he’s no stranger to small-town life. He went to high school in Galt, California, which is in the agricultural communities of Northern California, where rows upon rows of vineyards flank two-lane country roads. He lived in Acampo, which is a town with just a couple hundred people less than 10 minutes from Galt. Lucero said Powell feels a lot more like home. 

“This is what I want,” he said. “The big city life will really wear you down.”