Culinary Profiles
12 Gage Restaurant, Marathon
JOE RODRIGUEZ
The fare on offer at Marathon’s Gage Hotel has evolved enormously
over the life of the hotel, from its humble beginnings in the family-
style dining room off the main lobby to the Cenizo Café, and now the
12-Gage Restaurant.
With its modern, upscale take on regional cuisine, the 12-Gage
continues to garner accolades, largely due to the authentic touch of its
chef, Jose Rodriguez.
Rodriguez, a native of El Paso, has harbored a lifelong fascination
with food. Growing up in a traditional Mexican-American family, he
and his two older brothers watched his mother and grandmother
prepare family meals, and his father make pancakes on Saturday
mornings. On Sundays the family would travel to his grandmother’s
home in Juarez, where she would make menudo and homemade
tortillas. His favorite family meal was his mother’s chile colorado, a
traditional beef stew in a red chile sauce with potatoes. “It was mostly
traditional norteño food,” he said.
At 19 Rodriguez began his culinary education at the Texas Culinary
Academy, Le Cordon Bleu in Austin, now closed. He completed the
two-year program and began his internship at Café Central back home
in El Paso, known for its exquisite dining.
“I didn’t feel like I was in El Paso,” Rodriguez remembered. “I didn’t
Joe Rodriguez
“I didn’t know that kind of food existed.
It was a different world. The kitchen was
small, kind of downstairs, in an old
building. It felt more like New York
or someplace else, not at all like the
El Paso I knew.”
18
Cenizo
Winter 2020
Seafood corn chowder—scallops, mussels, clams and a tempura-fried prawn crown a corn and
shrimp stock base with bacon and potato.