About Chef Magana

WHY PROSSER ?

I got my start here in the Yakima Valley back in 2005 as a guest chef for Alexandria Nicole Cellars for an intimate, lively group of wine connoisseurs.  I felt a connection to Washington Wine Country and I returned several times throughout the year and soon realized this was where I wanted to build my business. So, that is what my wife and I set out to do…

Picazo Catering opened in the spring of 2007, followed in the fall with a quaint little restaurant in historical downtown Prosser, Picazo 7Seventeen Wine Bar & Restaurant. During this time we catered countless memorable Wine Country events including many picturesque weddings, fundraisers and out-of-this-world winemaker dinners.

In the spring of 2011 we relocated the business to the Tri Cities as Picazo Restaurant & Bar. This move was great for business but the expenses of maintaining the facility just didn’t pencil so we stepped back and took a good hard look at what it was we had set out to do and what it was that we felt we could do best and ended up right where we had started ! Surprising how that happens. The same small kitchen in the back of ANC’s Prosser Tasting Room that stood as my launching pad almost 7 years ago is now what I will happily call my home base.  Passion for my culinary art has fueled a love for all that this area has to offer as well as camaraderie with the city of Prosser. With amazing local wine and fresh produce I’m happily drawn back in hopes of filling the ever-growing need for top notch catering for all of Wine Country while enjoying the ability to really take ANC to the next level.  It’s a Win-Wine situation.  The Best Kind.

Chef Magaña Catering and Event Planning is now open. Back in the heart of WA wine country, Prosser.

Chef Frank Bio…

In a sentence, I would describe myself as: Chef Frank Magaña, a passionate young man with a talent to tantalize and a spirit to dream; a culinarian with no limit to create the perfect pairing with the fruit of his neighbors and a glass from a winemaker down the street.

At an early age, the talent to cook came very easily to me – I was simply working a side job while attending the local community college. If you ask my mom, she would say it was her who taught me everything she knows. Although she is a wonderful cook, the truth is, I met excellent chefs that saw the potential to mold this ever-eager young man with a thirst for knowledge, culinary knowledge. After just 5 years working under passionate artistic chefs, I had worked my way to a Sous Chef position at a small, fine dining restaurant. By that time, I had quit college and was now focused on a culinary career, mainly due to my folks sitting me down and giving me a swift kick in the pants.

The true driving force was really the idea of how much I could learn every day and the knowledge that I’d just begun to tap into an artistic fusion-driven world of passion, exotic spices, aromatic herbs, fiery chili and big bold wines.

So during my first chef position, it had only taken this thirsty-for-knowledge, driven young chef three short months to go from an occasional wine drinker to a “how did they get this in my wine glass” novice wine connoisseur. Almost nightly, I was spending my free evenings purchasing allocated (rare & coveted) bottles to share with the impeccable educated service staff, just to learn a little more. It was the first winemaker’s dinner that I helped prepare – an unbelievable dinner of seared Ahi, caviar, lobster, black truffles, fillet of beef tenderloin and chocolate paired with Washington Wine – that got me hooked and I never looked back. That dinner was with Leonetti Cellars.

Talented chefs and general managers weren’t the only ones to see my energy, drive and thirst for excellence.  A young server who worked with me had caught my eye – Miss Tricia Lynn. She is my never stopping inspiration, partner in the dream and what drives me to my happiness (now my wife of nearly12 years)!

As a young chef, I worked my way up the culinary ladder and hopped from restaurant to restaurant up and down the Puget Sound. I thought that I may be missing a little something by not attending a structured culinary program and so I enrolled at SSCC. It took just six months in the program for me to realize that – while it’s an excellent program – it wasn’t for me. I finished out the quarter and moved on.

Right about then I was offered and secured an executive chef position for a small catering company; the same year I married Tricia, bought a house and later that year started our family with the addition of Frankie Jr. (busy, busy year). About 4 years later, the catering company was growing by leaps and bounds, climbing to the top level catering company and reigning over the competition for many years to follow.

It was in this executive chef position where I met the winemakers who invited me to the heart of Yakima Valley. While on a weekend getaway to the Prosser & Red Mountain area wineries to visit with these winemaking friends, the talk of dinner inevitably had come up. The thought ending a day of wine tasting, barrel samples and vineyard tours with the perfect “Wine Country” dinner brought our conversation to a standstill. There wasn’t such a restaurant. So I hit the market, then the kitchen and prepared the perfect little dinner and as the night continued with friends, wine and more wine… the idea for me – Chef Magaña – to open his own restaurant was hatched.

(Many thanks should be paid to Ali & Jarrod Boyle who first invited me over to WA Wine Country!!)