It Was a Long Way to the Top : Business: An executive chef at a trendy Santa Monica restaurant worked his way up from dishwasher and serves as a model for others pursuing the American Dream.

As with many immigrants who enter this country illegally, the only job Martin Garcia could find when he arrived 10 years ago from Mexico was that of a dishwasher at a new Santa Monica restaurant.

Today, Garcia is still at that same restaurant--the very tony Michael’s--but now he is executive chef and senior vice president of McCarty Group Restaurants, which owns and operates Michael’s and three other restaurants across the country.

“I’ve always wanted to do something with my life,” Garcia said. “When I first got here, I just wanted to have a job. I wasn’t really thinking about the future. But now, I work hard because I want to be successful.”

Advancing from dishwasher to executive chef is analogous to moving from the mail room of a major corporation to company president; it’s rarely done.

Garcia’s ascent is even more remarkable because of the obstacles he had to overcome: his illegal immigration status, learning a new language and finding a way to fit in with classically trained chefs, particularly in a high-profile market.

It helped that restaurant owner Michael McCarty has a philosophy of training his people and promoting from within.

“Martin is our great success story,” McCarty said. “He is a light, a beacon of success. We like to promote from within. Each time a space becomes available, you look at the next guy in line to promote. He showed the initiative to perfect one stage before going on to the next.”

McCarty said that what Garcia, 29, lacked in experience and formal training, he made up with tenacity and an ability to learn quickly.

“He’s a fast learner,” McCarty said. “A good cook is one thing, but a good chef is someone who can think and who can manage people. It’s the business end of the kitchen. Martin is a good chef.”

But in a town such as Los Angeles, where restaurants are as popular for their celebrity chefs as they are for their food, was McCarty--himself a celebrity chef--concerned with turning over his kitchen to an unknown?

“Absolutely not,” McCarty said emphatically. “It was never a risk. We never moved him until he was better than the person before him.”

Garcia has come a long way since 1979, when he paid a coyote--a smuggler--$250 to get him across the border from Mexico into the United States to join two of his brothers.

He arrived in Los Angeles with only the skills of a farm worker who had toiled the fields surrounding his native hometown of Guadalajara. One of 11 children, Garcia said he came to the United States because he wanted more out of life than what his native Mexico could offer.

“My father was a farmer,” Garcia said. “We never went hungry, but I wanted to do something else with my life.”

Despite his lack of formal training, Garcia moved from dishwasher to head chef in five years.

“The best training is learning from the bottom up,” he said. “It’s one thing to have your resume say you can do the job, and another thing actually being able to do it.”

Now, as executive chef, Garcia manages a $4-million budget for the four restaurants and hires and fires personnel. He said he looks beyond a resume, or the lack of one, when he evaluates potential employees.

“It’s very important to look at the whole person,” he said. “You can usually tell whether a person can do the job within a couple of days, and whether that person is someone who can grow with the company, regardless of their experience.”

Garcia’s success has become a source of inspiration for others at the restaurant, particularly recent immigrants.

Benjamin Gonzalez, from Michoacan, Mexico, has been working as a dishwasher at Michael’s for seven months. But in that short time, he said Garcia has become a role model.

“I’m not sure what I want to do with my life, but seeing Martin’s success makes me believe that I can accomplish something here,” Gonzalez said in Spanish.

“Martin, being Latino, has been very helpful,” said Luis Campo, a dishwasher for three years who is originally from El Salvador. “We don’t speak English very well, so he speaks up for us when we can’t and explains things to us that we don’t understand.”

Juan Bautista, from Oaxaca, Mexico, has moved up from dishwasher to helping to prepare food for the chefs.

“Martin has helped me learn the business, and I think I have a future here,” Bautista said.

Garcia said the only thing holding Bautista back is his having to keep a second job to support his family and not having enough time to take classes to learn English more quickly.

“I tell all these guys that, if they want to succeed in the United States, they are eventually going to have to learn English,” Garcia said.

Garcia, who married his childhood sweetheart and is the father of two children, took English classes about five years ago and has a good command of the language, speaking with only a slight accent.

Taking advantage of the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s amnesty program, Garcia last year received his permanent residency card. He looks forward to becoming a U.S. citizen, after fulfilling the five-year permanent residency requirement.

“I want to be on equal footing with everyone else in this country,” he said. “Also, my intent is to live here the rest of my life.”

Garcia hopes to complete his success story by opening his own restaurant some day. But for now, he says he is happy learning about the business and helping McCarty branch out.

“Money is not the most important thing to me right now,” he said. “I know that will come later. I’m happy with what I am doing now, and I’m learning a lot.”