San Tan Valley chef keeps his dreams alive

From watching his mother cook to working in high-end restaurants, Scott Abad’s life has always revolved around food.

Today, the San Tan Valley resident and veteran chef reached a milestone that thousands of others aspired to.

Abad advanced to the national quarterfinals of the 2026 Favorite Chef competition, which raises funds for the prestigious James Beard Foundation. The online competition is run by Colossal.org.

Last year, Abad entered the competition on a lark and ended up placing fourth in the nation. But the early end of this year’s run doesn’t mean the end of Abad’s dreams.

“Our run in the Favorite Chef competition came to an end in the quarterfinals, but standing among the top tier out of 90,000+ chefs nationwide was a huge honor,” he said. “We are continuing full speed ahead with Flamingo Viands Catering and our youth culinary mentorship vision.”

Born in New Jersey, Abad and his family moved to Arizona 30 years ago. While he had other interests growing up, he always came back to cooking.

“My mom was a stay-at-home mom, and she was always cooking in the kitchen. When I wasn’t playing football, I was in the kitchen with my mom,” he said. “I love to do my mom’s cooking. She taught me a lot.”

At just 15, Abad started his culinary career as a busboy at a Sam Fox restaurant, while his cousin worked as a cook.

One day, a cook didn’t show up for work, and the chef allowed Abad, 16, to make salads.

“I started out as pantry cook and then I moved to the sauté cook and then I worked the grills and pizza,” he said.

In his more than two decades in the industry, he has worked at Fred’s at Barney’s New York in Scottsdale, Different Pointe of View at Pointe Hilton Tapatio Cliffs Resort, the Arizona Biltmore, The Buttes Marriott and various other locations around the Valley.

But it was his time at Different Pointe of View that molded his outlook on cooking. At the restaurant, he worked with James Beard Award-nominated Chef Anthony DeMuro who eventually became an important mentor to Abad.

DeMuro was the one who encouraged Abad to work on his dream of being a chef when culinary school was financially out of reach.

“He told me, ‘All these kids at a culinary school, they come to my restaurant, and they work for me and they don’t realize how hard a real kitchen is, and then they end up quitting and joining a different industry and wasting all that money,’” Abad recalled. “He said, “Don’t go to school right now. Learn as much as you can from me and then when you think you’ve learned enough, go to the next chef and learn as much as you can from him and then so on and so on until you become your own chef.’ And I did that.”

To spend more time with his wife and children, Abad now works as director of culinary experience at Acoya Troon, a senior living community in Scottsdale.

“Taking care of these people here really means a lot more than working in the regular restaurants where people come and go and you kind of never see them again,” Abad said. “It feels like I’m more than a chef here. I feel almost like a doctor. I take care of them with my food.”

Abad may be out of the traditional restaurant experience for now, but he still has the urge to create new signature dishes, which he does through his catering company Flamingo Viands Catering. 

“I’ve been trying to get it going and I bought a lot of the equipment, I bought a food truck, but as an executive chef (you don’t) get the hours,” he said. “I get to cater events when I can, but I’m trying to grow and make it bigger and start my own business.”

Abad also wants to continue being a mentor to young people interested in a culinary career much like DeMuro of Different Pointe of View was for him.

“I’ve been mentoring my whole life. All these kids and even adults,” he said. “Being there with my crew every single day, they really support me … I mentored a lot of people where they moved on and some of them went into the military, some of them became chefs and even more.”

Janet Perez can be reached at jperez@iniusa.org. Please send your comments about this article to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.