Cameron Trezoglou loves food. From harvesting to cooking to eating, he cannot get enough.
A 2014 graduate of the Colorado State University College of Business, Trezoglou has found a home for his passions working in Fort Collins restaurants focused on localizing food.
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“Getting closer to the ingredients is so important,” Trezoglou said.
He is currently working as a line cook for the Farmhouse at Jessup Farm. Jessup Farm, located on Timberline Road, is an artisan village of businesses housed in a re-purposed barn, saddle shop and farmhouse sitting on 130-year-old land.
The Farmhouse at Jessup Farm offers farm-to-table dining that emphasizes knowing where your food comes from. Head Chef Joel Navejas has a philosophy of knowing the food you eat, and bringing the best local ingredients to the table.
“Joel is working with the best ingredients. He’s showed me that by bringing me to the farms, ranches and cooking really good food,” Trezoglou said.
Trezoglou met Navejas after starting a Facebook group called “Making it in Fort Collins,” a community of culinary-minded people in the service and craft industry who wanted to collaborate in a non-competitive environment.
Trezoglou continued his connection in the craft industry working at CopperMuse Distillery, started by CSU alum Jason Hevelone, and Choice City Butcher and Deli.
“The craft industry and the people that made it are really passionate about what they do,” Trezoglou said. “That inspired that kind of standard of cooking in the service industry for me — not just working in a restaurant, but working in something where you’re proud to serve what you serve.”
Trezolgou said he is inspired to be working alongside chefs who apply their philosophies inside and outside of the kitchen. He took an entrepreneurship class from Tim Galpin, a CSU business professor, who said his class teaches students how to apply business to their lives.
“A lot of students won’t start a business right after graduation, or maybe ever,” Galpin said. “Really, even if they aren’t going to start a business, companies like people to be more innovative, creative.”
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Galpin’s class also teaches “intropreneurship,” the idea of a business within a business. As head chef at CopperMuse, Trezoglou exercised creativity by making a tasting and catering menu from nothing, along with taking over supply.
“(He) treated the kitchen as his own business,” Hevelone said. “His classes around entrepreneurship and his passion is around cooking — he could fuse those two. I just gave him creative freedom to do what he does best.”
Hevelone said Trezoglou learned to make cheese and purposely went to the farmer’s market to get the freshest produce to add to the menu.
“He started to become really well-known,” Hevelone said. “When people ate the food, it became the surprise of coming to the distillery.”
Trezoglou said the Farmhouse at Jessup Farm uses local Colorado ingredients from the best farms in the state, including their own farm, home to a chicken coop and garden that supplies a lot of the seasonal menu.
“I like that the things we use in a restaurant we can actually go see hanging out in the farms and forest,” Trezoglou said. “Everything we walk around in is an edible forest.”
He believes that localizing food and bringing a farm-to-table concept to restaurants are what the best chefs are doing.
“(It’s led to) just meeting all these really fantastic people who are really, really into food,” Trezoglou said. “The more and more I dive into (it) with the title of a chef, the more and more I can see what Fort Collins has to offer.”
Collegian Reporter Hannah Hemperly can be reached online at news@collegian.com or on Twitter @kawanhannah.
