Matthew Ramirez
Head Baker, Lucia | Dallas
December 2021
When Matthew Ramirez moved to Dallas from El Paso in 2012, he had no plans to cook professionally. But his wife was earning her PhD in biology and he needed a new job, so he started taking cooking classes at The Art Institute of Dallas while picking up gigs to cater charity events around the city. It was at one of these fundraisers that he met Chef Tom Fleming of Crossroads Diner and asked for a job right there on the spot. In 2014, he traded the culinary school kitchens for hands-on learning under Fleming's tutelage as a prep cook, before working his way up to an egg cook.
When Ramirez had time off, he’d stage at Lucia, Chef David Uygur’s rustic Italian restaurant. By 2016, Ramirez was hired as a line cook. He gradually took on more and more baking tasks, eventually morphing into the restaurant's designated “bread guy”. He was fascinated by the whole process—making something so beautiful out of just two ingredients. Now as Lucia’s head baker, he churns out pillowy-soft sourdough on the daily, as well as focaccia and breadsticks to go with the restaurant’s signature salumi boards, and shareable, tearable babkas to end the meal on a sweet note.
2021 StarChefs Dallas Rising Stars Baker Award Winner presented by Butter of Europe
