Their partnership started with their successful South Padre Island, Texas, restaurant and continues through their specialty food company, Food Cravings. Robert is an award-winning chef known for his unique ability to intuit the exact taste of fresh and rarely combined ingredients. He created his salsa as a signature appetizer at the restaurant and featured it in many popular dishes. The demand was
so strong that Food Cravings was established to satisfy the community of customers, colleagues, and friends who gathered over this extraordinary salsa. The Food Cravings Story
Robert’s childhood in the border town of Brownsville, Texas, introduced him to a variety of cultural cuisines at a very early age. His Croatia-born father took him on frequent trips to Eastern Europe, where he tasted authentic regional foods. At home, he enjoyed the freshest seafood from his father’s shrimp boats accented by the distinctive flavors of Mexico, just across the river. Inheriting his mother’s impressive cooking skills, he enrolled in a restaurant management school. His professors encouraged him to apply to the Culinary Institute of America, where he completed one of the world’s most rigorous and respected chef training programs. Denise grew up on a family farm in rural North Carolina, relishing the fresh taste of hand-picked tomatoes, corn, potatoes, melons, and strawberries, and homemade molasses. After she completed graduate school, her career as a Speech–Language Pathologist took her to a job in Dallas where she met Robert—at a restaurant, of course! Denise and Robert opened the Lantern Grill in 1998. She managed the front of the house, while he created the exceptional dishes with the incomparable taste of the freshest natural ingredients. With an early win in the prestigious Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival for a chicken wonton appetizer garnished with his signature salsa, the restaurant quickly built a loyal clientele of foodies, friends, and celebrities. They were extremely busy until the day they closed eight years later to return to North Carolina to be closer to her family. Denise and Robert continue to work together through Food Cravings, fulfilling their passion for creating fresh, authentic specialty foods to share with friends.
