Palm Beach dining: Renato's chef Javier Sanchez leans on quality ingredients, classic preparations for his dishes

Having been a chef in Palm Beach for more than 25 years — most of them at Renato’s in Worth Avenue’s Via Mizner — Javier Sanchez has served many gourmands and boldface-name patrons.

What he’s learned about them is paramount, he said.

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“People in Palm Beach have traveled everywhere and tasted so many things and know what they like and what they want,” Sanchez told the Daily News. “You can create a complicated dish with a lot of trendy ingredients, but if you stick with simplicity prepared well and with quality ingredients, it will always succeed in Palm Beach. It’s not that we don’t try new things — we are always doing that — but we try to keep things simple with fewer ingredients that are of the highest quality."

Since 2005, Sanchez, 55, has been head chef at Renato’s, home to such popular dishes as lobster risotto, osso buco, wild-mushroom ravioli and zucchini blossoms stuffed with smoked mozzarella, ricotta, sundried-tomato coulis and micro basil.

Except for a three-year stint at a long-gone Delray Beach restaurant, he has worked as a chef in Palm Beach since 1991 — first as a pastry chef and then sous chef at Bice through 1994; then as sous chef at the former Galaxy Grill (where Buccan is today) from 1995 to 2001. He worked in Delray from late 2001 until he joined Renato’s as a sous chef in 2004.

Growing up in Morelia, Mexico, “I was always helping my mom cook and I think I always knew cooking would be in my future,” Sanchez said.

When Sanchez landed his first professional cooking job in 1988 at Bice in Chicago, “I learned everything I could from the Italian chefs there and I read so many books on Italian food,” he said.

Italian cuisine remains at the heart of much of Sanchez’s cooking, although menus at Renato’s typically are described as Italian-emphasizing Continental.

The restaurant was founded in 1987 by the late Italian restaurateur Renato Desiderio, whose widow, . His wife, restaurateur Arlene Desiderio, continues to lead Renato’s.

When Sanchez isn’t working, he occasionally dines out at area French and Italian restaurants, but at home in West Palm, he prefers to  cook Mexican dishes for wife Ligia and children Jessica, 27, and Xavier, 15.

“Carnitas, slow-cooked pork (braised in fat), is my favorite,” he said.

His personal favorite at Renato’s? Spaghettini Fra Diavolo — thin house-made spaghetti with Maine lobster meat and spicy tomato sauce.

“It’s delicious. Good quality ingredients prepared just right.”

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Chef Javier Sanchez of Renato's in Palm Beach relies on simplicity, quality