San Diego Magazine's Happy Half Hour

Welcome back to Happy Half Hour! We are sorry, the audio quality this week isn’t fully up to par. You can blame David for being in Las Vegas for a heavy metal concert. This week our special guest is Ian Tenzer, the executive research and development chef at Puesto Mexican Artisan Kitchen & Bar. Ian joined the company last fall, which started in La Jolla and now serves its popular tacos and micheladas at nine locations in Southern California. Ian moved here from New York, where he worked with acclaimed chef Daniel Humm for several years and as sous chef at Eleven Madison Park, which has three Michelin stars and was named the World’s Best Restaurant in 2017. In his current role, Ian creates new menu items for all of Puesto’s locations, which he calls a “dream position,” and he's working on making their operations completely environmentally sustainable. We chat with Ian about what it really means to be a “zero-waste” restaurant and how he’s doing it, what it was like to cook at Eleven Madison Park, and the n