Meet Chef Samantha Sanz
October 7, 2024Restaurant Group: Post Hospitality, Phoenix, AZ
2024 Hog Farmer Appreciation Dinner Dish: Iowa corn Iberian Duroc pork tamal with mole sauce, pipian sauce, and farmers market escabeche vegetables
A native of Nogales, Mexico, Chef Samantha Sanz grew up in her family’s restaurant where she could be found running through the kitchen with her cousins, pausing just long enough to snack on beans wrapped in handmade tortillas before her grandmother shooed them out. “There were no PB & J’s when I was a kid,” she says. “I tasted everything. I was convinced that the love and hard work that went into every dish was what made everything taste so good.”
Despite her mother’s urging to study law, Chef Samantha went to culinary school. After graduating Le Cordon Bleu in Scottsdale and spending a year in France, she began her career as one of the few female cooks in the kitchens of top Phoenix restaurants, including elements under Chef Beau MacMillan and Virtu under Chef Gio Osso. Eventually, she found her way to Talavera at Four Seasons Resort Scottsdale. At 28, Chef Samantha became one of the youngest chefs in the Four Seasons brand.
The sophisticated, flavorful meals she brought to the table earned her a nomination for a Rising Star Chef of the Year award by the James Beard Foundation.
After Talavera, Chef Samantha rejoined the culinary team at elements, and is now a partner in Post Hospitality, a company focused on private chef dinners and cooking classes. While Chef Samantha has come a long way from her grandmother’s kitchen, her deeply rooted passion for food remains at the heart of her cooking today.
And that’s why she’s a fan of Niman Ranch. “You can taste what integrity does,” she said. “You can taste the quality and the nourishment in the meat.”
Chef Samantha said she was honored, flattered and humbled to be invited to share in the Niman Ranch Hog Farmer Appreciation Dinner this year, and while she appreciated working with the other chefs and the culinary students in the kitchen, she was most looking forward to the reaction of the dinner guests when they tasted her creative version of a borderland favorite, the pork tamal.
