Passion on display at Valley Foods

On Tuesdays and Thursdays shoppers at Valley Foods will get to see, taste, smell and buy meals cooked by Chef Eugene Api.

Shoppers at the store in the morning will smell the aroma of food as Api prepares his featured meal of the day. On Friday, that meal was chili served over jasmine rice, with steamed vegetables on the side.

On display next to his finished product are recipes created by Api using ingredients that can be found in the store.

Cooking fascinated Api when he was young and he started satisfying that curiosity when he was four or five, tasting his mom’s meals as she cooked. That curiosity turned into ambition as he got older and watched his cousin tasting the cooking at parties in the village in the Philippines where he was raised.

Api said his cousin didn’t just taste the meals, but always made suggestions as to how to make them taste better.

“I wanted to be like that,” Api said.

Instead, he ended up pursuing a career first in civil engineering and then surveying, but neither field felt right to him.

“I thought, I might as well join the navy,” Api said.

In the navy, his interest in cooking was reignited when he became the personal steward for the captain of a guided missile cruiser, and began preparing meals for the captain and his entourage.

Api has cooked for people all over the world and enjoys watching people appreciate his creations.

“Vanity is a thing that drives you to do good work,” he said.

Api has fun with his art. He likes to talk while he cooks and loves cooking for an audience, but he is serous about the end result.

“I used to tell the the guys working in the kitchen with me, ‘you can joke with me, but don’t touch my hat - I earned it,’” he said.

Api revels in the creativity of cooking, but also touts the practical side of it. To ease the financial burden of his grandchildren heading off to college, he taught them to cook.

“If you cook, you can eat on $50 a week,” he said.

Api has been in the Valley for 18 years and used to travel to Florida during the winter, but has stayed in Wyoming for the last two years.

“My daughter wants me closer now,” he said.

To fill his time, Api started working in the meat department at Valley Foods.

“We thought his real talent is in cooking, so why not have him do that instead,” Valley Foods owner Tim Lamprecht said.

Api’s cooking gig may evolve into teaching a cooking class in the coming weeks.

Lamprecht is still working out the details, but said the class would be free and limited to probably three or four people. Lamprecht is considering starting with one class a week, with the potential for going to twice a week if the demand is there.

Teaching a class or simply demonstrating his recipes, Api will get to share his cooking and his expertise with Valley residents.