Meet the chef behind Boise State Dining: Senior Campus Executive Chef Roland Cruz, who has worked at Boise State University for 10 years.
Whether you’ve seen Cruz’s face recently at the Boise State football game, at Buster’s Kitchen or Southfork, he creates a welcoming environment for students and fellow kitchen employees.
From washing dishes to restaurant management, Cruz moved onto training roles before eventually landing a job at Boise State.
“I’ve been doing restaurants all my life, a little over 35 years now,” Cruz said. “I started washing dishes somewhere and one day one of the cooks didn’t show up. That was kind of the basic progression of it.”
His father, Roland Cruz Sr., served in the Air Force, causing his family to move around between military bases. Whenever his parents made friends at the base, they invited them over to try food. Cruz mentioned that many of those friends had never been to Guam or experienced its food before, sparking his interest in cooking.
“All the stuff that they were getting was new. That was really where I started to get interested in cooking,” Cruz said.
By four or five years old, Cruz even helped his dad light the gas grill at home and make rice.
His mom, Lourdes “Lou” Cruz, also became an essential part of his career and still implements that in the way he reminds students of home with his food.
“She had a stroke, and so she couldn’t move the left side of her body, and so at that point she was always the cook for us, and then I just slid right into that,” he said.
Recreating the flavors his mother made for him as a child gave him the motivation to help students to cook for themselves.
“A lot of students are here [from] out of town. Their first time away from home. With the teaching kitchens, I try to teach them to lose that intimidation,” Cruz explained.
He creates a safe environment in teaching students how to do simple tasks such as cutting an onion which he did last year during the first teaching kitchen.
However, beyond cooking and teaching basic skills, Cruz sees food as a way to reconnect people with memories of home.
“They’re all kind of intertwined. When somebody eats something and they’re like, ‘Oh wow, I haven’t had that in a long time,’or ‘Man, I didn’t know that you could make that,’ [it means a lot to me].” Cruz said.
Two international members from the Korean Club complimented him for the food that he made, which they described as tasting similar to their mom’s food.
Cruz’s kids even critique a variety of dishes he makes, offering their opinions on the food he puts in front of them and creating shared moments of joy.
“Lately the thing that they would do is they would come home and they would try to guess what it is from the front door,” he said.
For Chef Appreciation Week, Cruz made a Filipino dish inspired by his home-country, Guam, that reminded him of a memory of concrete houses with tin roofs and typhoons strong enough to blow the roofs off.
When typhoons would hit, Cruz’s family would go to his aunt’s house because she lived with a concrete roof over her head. Using the outside kitchen with a propane tank brought the group of 15 to 20 people awaiting the storm a dish called braised chicken that Roland remembers to this day.
Laughter filled his aunt’s home, and his family would play cards and enjoy the food in front of them. He makes his own version of the dish that he calls “burnt meat,” with a sweet flavor and an Asian twist.
“But I do it in an hour and a half, and I love it,” Cruz said. “I eat it, and it’s something my mom always made, and everybody always commented on, and it’s my favorite.”
The central theme of food surrounds human connection, from the braised chicken that inspired him in Guam to recreate to braised “burnt meat” to teaching students the proper way to cut an onion. Individuals in his life taught him, and now he impacts all with his dishes and guidance in cooking.
