Love eating at McPhee’s? How the chef built a 40-year career and became a SLO County icon
As a young man, Ian McPhee didn’t start out with a burning yen to be a professional cook, far from it.
However, for more than 40 years, diners in San Luis Obispo County and beyond have enjoyed memorable meals at his restaurants (first Ian’s in Cambria, then McPhee’s Grill in Templeton) or at fundraiser dinners.
This year, McPhee’s Grill is celebrating its 30th anniversary as a landmark restaurant on Main Street in the North County town.
Most people don’t know that the locally famous chef/restaurateur in the black chef’s coat didn’t start to cook professionally until 1984, when the then 33-year-old opened Ian’s, his first restaurant.
That was a dozen years after he’d left college, time McPhee had spent working in the restaurant industry, but none of it “on the line” as a cook or chef.
McPhee had been a high school jock who rode a football scholarship to Cal Poly and then, somewhat inadvertently at first, into SLO County restaurant history.
In doing so, McPhee, now 73, not only found his career. He found his passion.
Ian McPhee took a long road to success
“My first food job was at McDonald’s in Pico Rivera when I was 15,” McPhee told The Tribune.
The young man born in 1951 in the San Gabriel Valley area was on the varsity football team at El Rancho High School. His performance as offensive guard secured him a Cal Poly athletic scholarship in 1969.
From then into 1972, the college student worked in the food-service cafeteria doing various jobs while living at the Heron Hall dorm and studying engineering technology, air conditioning and refrigeration.
But he hadn’t yet found his niche.
“I was not thinking that far ahead, just knew I wasn’t going back to a big city,” McPhee said.
Leaving Cal Poly in 1972, he worked as a dishwasher at the Cigar Factory in San Luis Obispo, his first job at a real restaurant. After “working every position there … except cook,” McPhee said, he worked up to being the manager for a couple of years.
From there, he went to D.W. Grover’s in Grover Beach, was the manager of Joshua’s in Paso Robles and then managed Vista Grande Restaurant and Cafeteria on the Cal Poly campus.
Despite accumulating restaurant cred for a dozen years, it was “crazy … but I had not done any line cooking yet,” he said.
That didn’t mean, however, that McPhee wasn’t gradually learning how to cook.
“I didn’t go hungry, that’s for sure,” he said with a laugh.
One Thanksgiving dinner was a turning point
McPhee figured out that he wanted a cooking career in 1978 “when I made a Thanksgiving dinner for my friend Dave Farmer and his family and guests at Farmer’s house,” McPhee said of an event that required him to cook for 16 people.
He was 27 years old.
“That was the turning point. I knew nothing, (but) I had the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook my mother had given me, and I pulled recipes from that,” he said. “It was a pretty traditional menu. I remember mushrooms stuffed with crab being my first attempt at something exotic.”
“I’d never taken a cooking class, or had a teacher or mentor. I was just lucky to find what I love,” McPhee said.
How McPhee opened his first restaurant
McPhee knew what he wanted to do, but it took fortuitous opportunity to get his career rolling.
“College teammate and friend Dave Billingsley approached me about doing a restaurant with him … the chance of a lifetime,” McPhee said.
For the next year or so, the pair remodeled a decades-old bungalow Billingsley bought in Cambria. It had been moved one block to the corner of Center and West streets.
In 1984, the eponymous Ian’s restaurant opened, launching the 33-year-old McPhee’s 40-year trajectory into being a locally legendary chef and philanthropist.
“This is when I started cooking,” he said simply. “I bought cookbooks from Alice Waters, Jeremiah Towers, Mark Miller and all the great American chefs that were on the forefront of fresh California cuisine.”
His favorite among the recent cookbooks about California and French cuisines ”The Art of Simple Food” by Waters, the famed farm-to-table owner of Chez Panisse in Berkeley.
“I just gave it to my granddaughter Sage Radecki,” he said of the treasured book.
Ian’s restaurant “was the greatest learning time of my life, a lot of work that would pay off,” McPhee said.
As he progressed, he’d try out new things at Ian’s. “Every week or two, I would have a new menu.”
Certain menu items were immediate, memorable hits: seared pork tenderloin with a Dijon mustard/creme fraiche sauce, a thick halibut filet with lime aioli finished in the broiler and a crispy veggie tempura.
He also familiarized himself with local wines to pair with his food, an unusual move then, which also helped establish many long-lasting partnerships.
Ian’s quicky became a destination restaurant
Many people still recall with nostalgia and fondness their visits to Ian’s.
During that time, “for a special occasion, if you wanted to get dressed up and go out for dinner, and not have to leave town, Ian’s was the place to go,” longtime Cambria resident Nancy Zinke told The Tribune.
McPhee also did offsite catering for Hearst Castle, Hearst Ranch and for Gary Eberle at Eberle Winery, who became a good friend and regular customer at Ian’s and McPhee’s Grill.
Today, “I consider McPhee’s to be one of the five best restaurants in the county,” Eberle said. The proof? For several years now, the Eberle family has hosted its large Christmas party in McPhee’s spacious back room.
“I think Ian was the first legit chef in the Paso Robles area. He set the standard. I’ve always considered Ian one of the finest. I think in many ways he dragged the food business into the 21st Century in Paso,” Eberle said.
What’s more, “for two or three years, Ian was the ‘resident chef’ for our winemaker dinners at Eberle Winery,” he said. “He even suggested that we get the same plates that he had at the restaurant. That way, if he had a situation where he needed more, he could borrow them from me” and vice versa.
Life had other twists in store for McPhee
Two years after Ian’s opened, McPhee met “the love of my life” in Cambria, he said of June Radecki. She already had three children, Tim, Holly and Abby, and the couple married in 1987.
Furthering the popularity of Ian’s, “June was interested in desserts and pastries, so she went to Tante Marie cooking school in San Francisco, and then took over the desserts” at the restaurant, McPhee said.
Son Max McPhee was born in 1990. The proud dad said that, as he and June raised their family of four, he relied on step-parenting lessons he’d learned as a child.
“My mother Margaret passed away when I was 6,” he said. “My dad (George McPhee) married Ruth when I was 9. She treated me like her own, which was a great example for me later” with his own blended family.
Taking the leap from Ian’s to McPhee’s Grill
For various reasons in 1993, it was time for a change.
“June and I decided we needed to step away from Ian’s and do something more for our family. With a lot of luck and backing from family and friends, we found the building in Templeton that would become McPhee’s Grill,” McPhee said. “It had been a restaurant or bar since the ‘50s.
“We bought the building in a foreclosure sale and really never saw the real guts of it” before escrow closed, McPhee said. “It turned out there were a few problems to solve. The kitchen was a mess for sure.”
The Wine History Project’s long report on McPhee defined it this way: “When Ian knocked a hole in the wall, he discovered thousands of cockroaches living happily there. The remodel took 10 weeks to remove all walls, cockroaches and appliances and redo the kitchen completely.”
McPhee’s Grill opened in April 1994
The style of food from Ian’s carried over to the new restaurant, as did his core customers.
“Everything we serve is something that sounds good to me, something I would want if I went out for dinner,” McPhee said.
“Two of my cooks from Ian’s came with me and have been with me ever since. Two others have been at McPhee’s since it opened,” he said.
From the outset at Ian’s and McPhee’s, the chef/restaurateur has relied on word of mouth to promote his restaurants.
It worked.
McPhee’s was a hit from the start.
“It was overwhelming. We had about 120 seats inside and out, and for at least the first six months, we served about 300 a night,” he said.
Since then, McPhee has dabbled in some other projects, such as a McPhee’s Grill at the Avila Beach Golf Resort, Sebastian’s in San Simeon and McPhee’s Canteen in Paso Robles’ nearby Tin City district.
“Unfortunately, or maybe not, we closed all of those. It was a nice try; we just couldn’t make them work,” he said.
As was the case for all sit-down restaurants in the county, McPhee’s Grill had to shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic closure times.
There was a silver lining to that, though.
“After the governor gave me a year off in 2020, I realized I’m not the retiring kind … I just love to cook. I like everything about it,” McPhee said. So, “I’m still very involved in the day-to-day, teaching my son Max and daughter Holly the business.”
What’s on the menu at McPhee’s Grill?
The smaller, post-pandemic dinner menu at McPhee’s Grill has three steaks, a pizza and five other entrees (baby back ribs, a double-cut pork chop glazed with ancho-chili-apricot jam, halibut crusted with a macadamia-nut-and-panko mixture, jambalaya pasta and the half-pound American Wagyu burger).
Some of the specials, like the spicy rack of lamb and lump crab cake, also are high on the list.
Entree prices range from $32 to $58; pizza costs $28.
Also on the menu are six “starters,” three salads, a soup and six desserts, more than four dozen carefully selected wines, plus beers and ciders, many of them local.
As is the case with any successful restaurant, especially since the pandemic, “we needed to find a balance of what sells and labor cost to produce the quality of service and food our customers expect,” McPhee said.
“Our steaks are the most popular, especially the 32-ounce Porterhouse for two, followed by macadamia-crusted halibut and tempura shrimp,” McPhee said. “The most popular dessert is June’s crème brulee.”
“It is all good,” McPhee said his restaurant’s cuisine.
The reputation of McPhee’s Grill and its leader continue to grow, and 73-year-old McPhee is reveling in time with his family and his restaurant’s success.
Quoting from the opening page of the Ian’s restaurant menu so long ago, he said, “’The work is over, so let the fun begin.’”
“Yes, we’re working really hard, but this is fun.”
More about McPhee’s Grill
Dinner is served from 5 to 9 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays at McPhee’s Grill, 416 Main St. in Templeton. Reservations are required. For details, call 805-434-3204 or go to the restaurant’s website, Facebook page or Instagram account.
