With Mica, his ambitious restaurant debut in Ukiah, chef Alan Molina is building on his experience and Mexican heritage
Some days, Alan Molina has to pinch himself to make sure that it’s real – that at the tender age of 26, he’s really the co-owner and executive chef of Mica, the new modern American restaurant that opened on December 1 in Ukiah.
It’s a tall order for someone so young, but he’s got all the right stuff to make it a success.
Born and raised in Ukiah, Molina has been part of the city’s restaurant scene since he was a child. He started working at Lalo’s, which is co-owned by his sister Gaby and brother-in law Lalo, when he was just six or seven years old. He continued working there on and off until he graduated from high school, through its transition from a food truck to a brick-and-mortar restaurant.
The experience gave him a solid grounding in the skills and hard work required to successfully run a restaurant, and inspired him to want to open his own restaurant some day. But then he decided to go in a different direction, if only temporarily.
“Because I was at Lalo’s every day, I sort of started to hate food,” Molina said. “For a while, I didn’t want anything to do with restaurants.”
Instead, he studied criminal justice for a couple of semesters, then attended the Cal Fire academy and got picked up by the organization when he was 18. He spent five seasons as a fireman, although he did continue to work in the family food business in the off seasons.
After five years at Cal Fire, Molina reached a fork in the road, and knew he had to decide what path to commit to: firefighting or food. Needless to say, the restaurant business won out in the end.
“For a while, I didn’t want anything to do with restaurants.”
– Alan Molina
“I got to a point in my career as a fireman where I would be able to advance to engineer and stay with Cal Fire full time – which meant I would have to forget about all the restaurant stuff,” he explained. “Once you promote to engineer, you go to the academy again, and you basically become a ‘lifer.’ And while I loved being a firefighter, I ultimately decided to leave the fire service for good and pursue a career as a chef.”
Molina spent the next three years training at the Culinary Institute of America’s (CIA) Napa and New York campuses, interspersed with stints of hands-on work experience at different restaurants in New York City. After he graduated, he hit the road, working for short periods at a wide variety of restaurants in the U.S. and Mexico, learning as much as he could in as many different types of establishments as he could. Although his primary interest was upscale Mexican cuisine, he got to know various culinary concepts, dining styles, and kitchen management techniques during his months on the road, which took him from New York to Nashville to San Francisco to Mexico City to San Diego.
It was during this period that he got inspired to create a fine-dining restaurant that would allow him to both use his classical training and incorporate the Mexican food that is part of his family heritage.
“My goal before I went to culinary school was just to open a taqueria,” Molina said. “But once I went to school and saw the fine dining side, I saw what you could actually do with food. I saw that I could make it better than what we have now, and improve what is already there. And that was really exciting for me.”
It wasn’t long before he got the opportunity to do just that. He was working at a well-known Mexican restaurant in San Francisco, and taking weekend trips back up to Ukiah. On one of those trips he learned from his sister Gaby that the owners of a certain vacant restaurant space were looking for a new tenant.
“She came to me and said ‘hey, I have this crazy opportunity. I know you said you want to keep traveling, but you might want to do this.’” Molina explained. “And I was like, well, what is it? So we started talking about this place, and it was very scary at first, especially because I’m so young and early in my career.”
“This place” refers to the property at the northwest corner of Commerce Drive and Airport Park Boulevard in Ukiah, which has seen a few restaurants come and go over the last few years (including Crush and Hangar 39, most recently).
Despite his initial trepidation, Molina’s confidence in his skills and his family’s track record of success in the industry convinced him to go ahead with the restaurant. (In addition to Lalo’s, Molina’s brother-in-law’s family owns Taqueria Jalos in Ukiah and Willits, and other restaurants in the Bay Area).
“I never really thought I would get to do something like this until I had a lot more experience, but I’ve seen so many other people be very successful in the industry who never went to culinary school, that didn’t work in any top restaurants or anything,” Molina continued. “Especially my family members on my brother-in-law’s side. They never went to culinary school. But they opened several restaurants and they’re really good at it and they’re successful. So who’s to say I can’t do it too?”
So Molina moved back to Ukiah, and last October he struck a deal with the property owners, who were enthusiastic about giving an opportunity to an ambitious young local chef with a fresh concept for the space.
Once the deal was done, things progressed quickly: It took him just a little under two months to renovate the space, purchase supplies, and hire staff. Mica officially opened on December 1, 2023. He settled on the name as an homage to both his grandmother, whose nickname was Mica, and his late brother Michael, whose name translates to “Mica” in Latin.
It was during the ramp-up period that Kenneth Chau came onboard as Mica’s sous chef, which led Molina to change the menu’s focus from upscale modern Mexican, his initial idea, to a “modern American” concept. Molina and Chau, who is Asian and Venezuelan, became friends when they both worked at Californio’s in San Francisco. Together they landed on a menu for Mica that combines different cuisines.
“With how small Ukiah is and how many Mexican restaurants there are, it’d be very hard to do just Mexican,” Molina explained. “So we decided, let’s do modern American with some Mexican and Asian flair in there. I added the Asian influence because of Kenny. He has a lot of input on the menu.”
“The goal is to provide an upscale atmosphere without full-blown ‘fine dining,’” he added. “I’m trying to achieve that middle ground where it’s not so casual that you lose the feeling of an upscale restaurant, but it’s not so upscale that you feel like you need to dress or act a certain way.”
“It’s definitely a learning experience. Every day it’s something new.”
– Alan Molina
Mica takes advantage of the property’s sheer size to offer two different dining options to customers: there is the restaurant side, which seats about 100 people and has a traditional format and menu; and
there’s the more informal pub side centered around the bar which seats about 50 and offers small bites and creative cocktails.
Behind the scenes, Molina is committed to what he calls “clean food,” a concept that incorporates low waste, respect for food and staff, and attention to hygiene in the kitchen.
“It’s about knowing the proper way to break things down, to cook them, and store them,” he said. “For example, when we process a protein, like a whole duck, we utilize every part of it so that there is very little waste, or no waste at all. So we’ll take the bones and make stock, or we’ll make a sauce from the stock and use the fat for cooking confit, or put unused parts in new dishes.”
“You need to treat the product well,” he added. “So if you filet a fish, you don’t just throw it around or slam it down on the counter. It’s still an animal that’s losing its life for your consumption, and should be treated that way. You should respect the animal, even if it’s dead.”
On the topic of hygiene, Molina runs a tight ship that’s typical of the high-end restaurants he learned in. He also follows this ethos with respect to staff management, but doesn’t veer toward the abusive.
“I was trained that you always have a clean apron, you have a separate towel for your knife and another for the cutting board or counter, and your kitchen is always clean and organized,” he said. “Storage is important too. Everything’s all labeled and organized in the right containers. We pay attention to the details and clean all the time and stuff like that. There were a lot of restaurants that I worked in before I went to school where everyone wiped their hands on their apron. Or no one cared about how to store things properly or how long things last, and that led to a lot of spoilage and waste.”
“You also need to treat your people well,” he continued. “In New York, I worked for a French chef who would scream and cuss at you and throw things. But when I was a firefighter I had a captain who once said that if you create a family or a bond, you create buy-in that everyone’s going to follow and you don’t even have to raise your voice. You don’t have to be mean or loud. I feel like if I do raise my voice in a kitchen or as a leader, it’s a weakness. It means I don’t know how to communicate well enough to you that I need something done. So I try to be a better leader. I don’t lead by fear.”
Although Molina is satisfied with Mica’s current concept, he is open to adjusting based on customer response and the hard-to-define nature of the Ukiah restaurant scene.
“I’m feeling the market and seeing how people react to things, because this is all new to me,” Molina said. “I think the most challenging thing is finding what works in Ukiah, because it’s a very unique community. It’s a mix of a lot of different lifestyles and tastes. So what may work for one group of people may not be to the liking of the other groups. So I’m trying to find where my food and service fits into this community.”
“It’s definitely a learning experience,” Molina said. “Every day it’s something new.”
Mica is located at 1180 Airport Park Boulevard in Ukiah. The pub is open seven days a week, 11am–10pm, and the dining room is open Tuesday through Saturday, 5–9pm. Reservations are preferred for the dining room, but walk-ins are welcome. To make a reservation, call 707-621-9107 or visit mica.bar.
