DENVER >> Troy Guard, now an acclaimed chef with nine restaurants in Colorado, grew up around the ocean on Maui. His father catered luaus and made barbecue chicken on weekends.
Guard’s start in the restaurant business, though, was not in the kitchen, but behind the scenes as a dishwasher at Roy’s Kahana on Maui.
Watching Roy Yamaguchi and his chefs design and prepare the restaurant’s fusion cuisine showed him what he wanted to do with his life.
Guard quickly climbed the Roy’s ladder, moving to cooking and, while still in his early 20s, running the kitchen at the flagship Roy’s in Hawaii Kai. He then headed to Hong Kong to open Roy’s at New China Max and then took Manhattan as executive chef at Roy’s in New York.
“Working for Roy influenced my career,” Guard said in an interview at his TAG restaurant (his initials — Troy Atherton Guard) in the hip LoDo, or Lower Downtown neighborhood of Denver. “Working with him showed me you can do anything you want.”
Guard’s food is known for bold flavors, use of local ingredients and his mix of Asian, Hawaiian and other global cuisines and cooking techniques.
Since moving to Denver, Guard, 45, has begun incorporating Mexican food into his menus.
Yamaguchi describes Guard as “always a thinker,” creative in the kitchen. He “adds a lot of depth and layers to his food as he cooks,” Yamaguchi said. Since leaving Roy’s, “he’s become more versatile and broadened his style of cooking.”
Guard remembers the freedom Yamaguchi gave his chefs to create, but also his high standards. “If I made a dish and he didn’t like it, he didn’t serve it.”
One dish Yamaguchi did let Guard put on the menu in Hawaii Kai was a lamb shank, cooked adobo style with Thai red curry sauce.
It’s the kind of dish Guard is known for — blending and balancing flavors, cooking techniques and ingredients. “I like bold flavors.”
His signature dish at TAG is OG Taco Sushi — charred ahi on sushi rice with guacamole and a li hing-mango salsa in a wonton skin taco shell.
“OG stands for the original, ’cause people have tried to copy,” Guard said.
His newest restaurant, Mr. Tuna, is named after his father: “They used to call him Mr. Tuna because he was always in the water.”
The restaurant features grilled steaks and other meats along with seafood like Charlie Guard ahi poke with avocado, seaweed and a chili pepper-soy dressing; and freshly shucked oysters with “fresh bloody Hawaiian chili pepper water.”
Guard returns to Kula, Maui, every year to help with a family tradition.
“Every Thanksgiving, my father digs an imu and people come from all around to put turkeys inside,” Guard said.
While in Hawaii, Guard gets his fill of his favorite local foods — “grilled kalbi, huli-huli chicken and fish” before heading back to Denver.
Like Yamaguchi, Guard gives his chefs a chance to develop their own dishes and cooking styles, while remaining true to the restaurant concept. And like Guard, some have gone on to open their own restaurants.
For Yamaguchi, that means his cooking style is now influencing a third, and maybe even fourth, generation of chefs.
“That’s the most awesome feeling,” Yamaguchi said. It’s like “having kids. … I’m here to set people up for success. … When I see or hear from them from time to time, it puts a smile on my face.”
Guard hopes to open a restaurant in Hawaii in the next five years, “by the time I’m 50.”
He’ll serve what he calls “local-boy cuisine.”
“That’s what I want to share with everybody,” he said. Local products with an “island spirit of food.”
In the meantime, how does a local boy, who grew up around the ocean, adjust to life in landlocked Denver?
“I have a pool,” Guard said.
