RICHMOND, Va. — Ryan Diaz never planned on becoming a chef in Richmond.
The Miami native joined the Air Force at 19, spent years stationed in Charleston, South Carolina, and trained in some of the country’s most respected kitchens before eventually landing in Virginia.
Along the way, he worked for free at Sean Brock’s acclaimed McCrady’s, cooked in elite Los Angeles restaurants and helped open some of Richmond’s most talked-about dining concepts before stepping away to reconsider whether he even wanted to stay in the restaurant industry.
Now Diaz is leading Mañana, a seasonal kitchen concept operating inside the Fan District bar Cahoots, where he hopes to blend the discipline of fine dining with a more approachable neighborhood experience.
“I wanted it to have its own identity,” Diaz said during a recent appearance on the “Eat It, Virginia!” podcast hosted by Scott Wise and Robey Martin. “This isn’t just Cahoots like the bar. This is Cahoots now, and there’s a restaurant in here.”
Diaz’s path into cooking was anything but traditional.
Born and raised in Miami, Diaz said he spent much of his late teens trying to figure out his future before enlisting in the Air Force.
While stationed in Charleston, Diaz became increasingly serious about cooking professionally.
A friend connected him with a cook working at McCrady’s, the influential Charleston restaurant once led by Brock.
At the time, Diaz admitted he had no idea what McCrady’s represented in the culinary world.
“I honestly thought it was an Irish pub,” he said.
Still, he accepted an invitation to stage — an unpaid trial shift common in fine-dining kitchens — and quickly found himself immersed in one of Charleston’s most respected restaurants.
“I pretty much just told him, 'Hey, I want to be able to come in and just learn and work for free,'” Diaz said.
For nearly four years, Diaz balanced military duties with late nights in professional kitchens.
He would finish work on base, change into kitchen clothes and spend evenings cooking until after midnight before returning to military duty the next morning.
One Air Force supervisor repeatedly challenged him to stop talking about cooking and actually pursue it.
“He was like, ‘You ain’t about it,’” Diaz recalled. “‘You said you want to cook.’”
The challenge helped push him deeper into the culinary world.
At McCrady’s and other Charleston restaurants, including The Ordinary, Diaz absorbed the fundamentals of professional cooking while working under chefs known nationally for technical precision and ingredient-driven cuisine.
Those experiences eventually led him west.
Inspired by Anthony Bourdain’s advice to travel as far as possible, Diaz considered Chicago, New York and Los Angeles before choosing California.
Before leaving the military, he arranged another stage at Animal, the influential Los Angeles restaurant known for nose-to-tail cooking and late-night dining culture.
Animal exposed Diaz to a kitchen obsessed with organization and efficiency.
“Those guys do not mess around,” he said. “Everything is dialed in.”
After several months there, Diaz moved to another Los Angeles restaurant, then called MTN and now known as RVR, operated by chef Travis Lett.
The kitchen introduced Diaz to Japanese techniques, intense service environments and a multilingual staff made up largely of Japanese cooks and workers from Oaxaca, Mexico.
“It was just so busy and so alive,” Diaz said. “I learned a lot. I was just taken aback, really, by the whole experience.”
Following two years in Los Angeles, Diaz returned to Charleston and became part of the opening team at Vern’s, the acclaimed restaurant that later earned a Michelin star.
By the time he arrived in Richmond roughly three years ago, Diaz had built a résumé filled with restaurants many chefs spend entire careers trying to reach. But he also found himself burned out.
He discovered Richmond restaurant Lost Letter through social media and recognized the restaurant’s connection to Longoven, another nationally recognized Richmond restaurant he had previously heard about from chef friends.
Instead of immediately returning to a leadership role, Diaz deliberately accepted a lower-pressure prep position.
“I kind of wanted to take it slow,” he said. “Sometimes when you put all of yourself into something, you gotta take a step back.”
Eventually Diaz worked his way into a sous chef role, helping develop systems and menus before later becoming opening chef de cuisine at The Brooklyn, another high-profile Richmond restaurant project from restaurateur Patrick Phelan.
There, Diaz helped build a menu centered around wood-fire cooking and seasonal ingredients.
One signature dish — a mushroom preparation designed to treat mushrooms “like steak” instead of an afterthought — became an unexpected hit.
“I love surprising people with mushrooms,” Diaz said. “If you can make really tasty mushrooms, people are really into this.”
Despite the success, Diaz again found himself questioning whether restaurant life remained sustainable long-term. He considered leaving kitchens altogether and using military benefits to study civil engineering, a field he worked in while enlisted.
Then came a conversation at a pool party. A mutual friend connected Diaz with Cahoots owner David Foster, who had been searching for a chef to expand the restaurant’s food program. After several meetings, Diaz agreed to take over the kitchen and create a new concept within the existing space.
The result became Mañana. The name, Spanish for “tomorrow,” reflects Diaz’s Puerto Rican heritage as well as his evolving approach to cooking.
Rather than focus on a single regional cuisine, Diaz designed the menu around seasonality and flexibility.
Certain anchors — including roasted chicken and pork Milanese — remain consistent while sauces, vegetables and side dishes shift throughout the year.
“Right now on the chicken, I have a salsa verde,” Diaz said. “Maybe in the wintertime it has more depth or it’s heavier.”
The compact menu at Mañana has already attracted attention from Richmond diners for its simplicity and creativity.
Martin praised the restaurant’s seasonal salads, melon dish with Aleppo pepper and pork Milanese.
“There’s more creativity than that corner has seen in quite some time,” Martin said.
For Diaz, one of the biggest advantages of Mañana is accessibility.
Most of his previous restaurants operated at a price point that made regular visits difficult for many diners, including his own friends.
“No one’s dropping $300 every week,” Diaz said. “To be able to have a menu where everything can be priced in a reasonable range — I really love that about this opportunity.”
He also hopes to see stronger relationships develop between chefs and local farmers.
“When I came here, I expected the farmer-to-restaurant situation to be a little bit more developed,” Diaz said.
Still, Richmond has become home in ways he did not initially expect.
Diaz met his wife, a Chesterfield County native, in Charleston.
The couple married last year at Lost Letter, the Richmond restaurant that helped reintroduce Diaz to cooking after burnout.
The city’s skateboarding culture also helped him settle in.
Diaz, an avid skater, said Richmond’s underground skate scene reminded him of the creative energy he had searched for elsewhere.
For now, Diaz appears focused on sustainability.
“It’s a hard business,” he said. “You’re only as good as your last service.”
