First came the surprise in the box called Cracker Jacks. Then came predictable fast food in the box – as in Jack in the Box.
Now comes innovative, out-of-the-box street food from Durango’s The Box, open daily for lunch and dinner at 1101 Main Ave.
Cook, bottle washer and resourceful restaurateur Marcos Wisner stands behind the counter in his food trailer on the corner of 11th and Main. He stirs a little and slings a little, eventually squeezing a squirt of sauce from a bottle to finish a slider.
Outside The Box, a line forms. Seated at the three picnic tables are hungry customers.
Pork steam bun? Beet home fries with Kewpie mayo? Cubano? Diners grab a beverage from a cooler, use their fingers to sign for their order on an iPad, then take a seat.
Welcome to the convenience of international street food, minus the bricks and mortar. This is fast food served from a trailer, not exactly a food truck. Durango’s new kid on the block is tucked downtown in the corner of a parking lot, a hybrid of eclectic thinking, featuring a menu that feels like the cook hop-scotched his way from one end of the world to the other.
In fact, that’s pretty close to what Wisner did.
The 20-something Wisner grew up in Durango, where as a teenager he worked at Carver Brewing Co. and eventually graduated to East by Southwest, he said. A traditional college degree wasn’t for him, but learning about the food he loved was an educational, albeit risky, journey Wisner was ready to take.
“I wanted to immerse myself in as many culinary scenes as I could. I was ready to learn and take what I could use,” he said.
In the high-end restaurant world, staging (a French word for unpaid chef apprenticeships) is the equivalent of an internship that tests stamina and aptitude within the hierarchal world of the back of the house – the kitchen.
For some graduates of traditional culinary schools, staging is the first walk-on part they get in a restaurant’s 80-hour-a-week kitchen theater. Observing, being useful to others, staying on task, cleaning up after yourself and staying out of the way when necessary, all are part of the ethos of a typical day in the competitive restaurant world.
While staging at Austin Texas’ Uchi, Wisner took a sous chef’s advice to skip the schooling altogether and instead spend a few years cooking in New York City. Uchi set him up to stage at Jewel Bako, where he cleaned fish and made rice for sushi. Within a month, he moved on to Masa, a 26-seat Manhattan restaurant consistently ranked among the top 100 three-star Michelin restaurants in the world.
“After my experience there, culinary school seemed expensive and unnecessary,” Wisner said.
School is a great option for some, he said, but he did not relish the thought of graduating with $60,000 of debt and facing the likelihood of making less than $10 an hour in an entry-level position.
Instead, staging opened doors for him.
“You arrive every morning ready to work, with your knife sharp. If someone cuts off a finger, you are ready to step up. In the restaurant world, it is all about timing,” Wisner said.
Wisner worked and networked his way through paid and unpaid gigs, often staying in a kitchen less than a year or just long enough to land on his feet at the next frontier. His résumé reads like the Who’s Who of Where to Be Seen Dining: NYC’s Torrisi, Jean Georges and Eleven Madison Park; California’s Hama Hermosa and Napa’s Restaurant at Meadowood. Finally, he landed a four-month stint at Copenhagen’s Noma, a restaurant ranked among the top 10 in the world.
From the ridiculously expensive to the relatively affordable food classrooms, Wisner said he learned a variety of lessons through baby steps. Use every part of a food and waste nothing. The guest experience goes far beyond just the plate before him. Vision matters, Wisner said.
By the time others are doing the next big thing, the trend creators have moved on.
