Ryan Benyi
Sebastian La Rocca is the executive chef at FYR, Spark and Stories on High, and that’s no small title, given the Hilton Columbus Downtown is now the largest hotel in Ohio with more than 1,000 rooms. After honing his craft alongside some of the world’s best cooks, he has landed in New Albany to raise his family while working in the state’s capital.
La Rocca’s cooking journey began in his grandmother’s kitchen in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
“People ask me who’s my main influence in cooking, what chef I like, and I always say my grandmother,” La Rocca says. “I use many recipes from my grandmother in my restaurant. Since I (can) remember, I used to be around my grandmother and my grandparents, cooking around and having fun in the kitchen on the weekends.”
Half-Italian and half-Argentinian, La Rocca’s heritage flavors his dishes.
“Because you are here, you cannot appreciate what you have. It’s a great city to raise a family.”
La Rocca offers this advice to people who want to incorporate more good, healthful foods into their diet:
“First, don’t buy by the price. Buy by the product. If you go to the farmer’s market, you’re gonna get the fresh, amazing products, better than a grocery. Second, don’t put too much. Don’t overwork the plate. Less is more.”
“The other thing is (cooking), it’s not a secret. Everyone can cook, that’s what Ratatouille says. What you need to do is go into the kitchen, explore. Experiment. Worst case scenario, you burn
something, or something you do is over spiced. Today you’re going to do that, tomorrow you will do better.”
He says that repetition and muscle memory are the keys to success. He has practiced martial arts for 28 years, and says that cooking is the same. If you train and understand discipline, you will grow and learn.
“My ancestors in Argentina, my people, they cook for their whole life with fires,” he says. “So it’s in our DNA and it’s part of who we are, the fires. As well, being half-Italian, Italy is all about the products, seasonality, and that’s who I am as well.”
World travels
La Rocca left Argentina for the United States at 18 for culinary school in Miami, where he had family that he visited throughout his childhood.
Miami was his springboard to begin traveling the world, always learning and experiencing new cultures through food. He explored Chile, Ecuador, Brazil and all over Europe.
He lived in London, where he worked for Jamie Oliver of The Naked Chef for almost five years.
“He’s a great guy, super generous,” La Rocca says, “and the thing I recall from Jamie is that he really showed me a passion about ingredients and how important it is to support local suppliers.”
Working with Oliver gave La Rocca invaluable experience working in high-stakes, Michelin Star locations. Barbecoa, which was one of the top restaurants in London at the time, was particularly influential in his development.
La Rocca left London for Costa Rica, where he and his wife, Karen, met and their daughter, Miranda, was born. Karen’s parents still live there. But they packed up and moved to the United States.
Settling in the States
“For me, work is work, more or less. The most important is family,” he says. “Any work, any offer, any country, if the family is not happy, I don’t care how much I get paid or how good is the job. The key for me, zero drama, enjoy and have the family happy. I don’t live for work.”
His outlook on work life balance benefited both his career and his family. In 2018, they moved to Miami and La Rocca opened a new restaurant, Cvltvra. Miami didn’t turn out to be a permanent home for La Rocca and his family, however.
“Columbus found me,” he says.
When he got the offer from Hilton, La Rocca and Karen first turned to Google. He thought that Columbus presented beautifully online. The couple visited Columbus for a weekend and found that it had a little bit of Chicago and New York, and La Rocca says it felt like “a small big city.”
Between amazing theater, museums, the zoo, sports and more, La Rocca says it’s hard to see how great central Ohio is until you move here.
“The people are what makes all the difference,” La Rocca says. “Columbus has a lot to offer. My daughter and my wife, they are into art, very into fashion, and Columbus is the third city in fashion in the country. It’s a city with great art. I’m into sports. This city breathes sports.”
He loves the outdoors and is always seeking new ways to have fun and take advantage of central Ohio’s many active opportunities. He says that he has always appreciated seasonality, and tends to choose places and activities that change with the seasons.
“In summer, we like hiking, we like climbing, we like water sports. … New Albany is great to do the bicycles because everybody respects the bicycles cycling,” he says. “Then in winter, you have the snow sports to do here. You can ice skate and one hour from here you can ski in Mad River.”
With such a wealth of things to do right here in New Albany, La Rocca says, it’s a great place for Miranda to grow up.
“Because you are here, you cannot appreciate what you have. It’s a great city to raise a family,” he says.
La Rocca also appreciates the nearby agriculture and being so close to the food that feeds his family and his restaurant guests.
New to New Albany
“We go to different areas of the city, and New Albany reminds me a lot of where I grew up in Buenos Aires,” he says. “I grew up in area where they call San Isidro. In San Isidro, it’s the same, it’s the suburbs, the community’s great, and we went to New Albany and I said to my wife, ‘This is home.’”
Miranda is now 9 years old and goes to New Albany-Plain Local Schools. One of the family’s first, yet lasting memories of New Albany was when a New Albany Police officer stopped to praise Miranda for wearing her bike helmet and handed her a voucher for free ice cream.
“Something I like in the school is you have different demographics and different levels of people,” he says, “but nobody makes you feel like you don’t deserve to be there. … I like the diversity. Nobody cares who you are or how much you have, everybody interacts with everyone. And they have amazing diversity of people at the school.”
He says New Albany’s diversity helps his family feel at home. Miranda has friends from Ghana, Brazil, Uganda, China and more, making New Albany feel that much more special.
Karen volunteers at the library twice a week, helping teach Spanish to local kids.
“Yesterday night I was talking to Karen about how she was feeling, about how she was doing volunteering at the library, and she was really happy because she sees people already coming looking for her for help,” he says.
She is glad that there are parents who know to look to her when their children need help. La Rocca says it is important to give back to the community, and it’s a value his whole family cherishes.
“We moved here eight months ago, and we didn’t know anyone,” he says. “And in eight months, my wife, my daughter, they have people already that take them in and make them feel warm and welcome.”
Pull quote for this section: “Because you are here, you cannot appreciate what you have. It’s a great city to raise a family.”
Tyler Kirkendall is an editor at CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at tkirkendall@cityscenemediagroup.com.
