Emilio Cerra

I was born in Puebla, MX. However, my family and I moved to South Carolina when I was less than a year old. I began cooking in small restaurants in Spartanburg, SC shortly after leaving Clemson University, where I had been studying Computer Science. After having dinner at Sean Brock’s McCrady’s in Charleston, SC I realized that going to culinary school and making a career of this was my calling. After finishing my studies at the Culinary Institute of America I stayed an additional year to complete the Manager in Training program for the Seafood Identification and Fabrication, where I helped teach students both about seafood as well as how to fabricate it. The natural next step for me after learning and becoming proficient at fabricating fish was to learn to cook, and there’s nowhere else—at least in the US—to learn this at the highest level than Le Bernardin. I spent three years working at Le Bernardin, finishing my time there as the sous chef in Menu Development which coincided with the beginning of the pandemic. After moving to Greenpoint, BK mid-pandemic, I applied to be a sous chef at Oxomoco, a one Michelin star Mexican restaurant with a focus on wood-fired cooking. Fast forward approximately nine months and I was honored with being offered the CDC position at the restaurant.