For most of the last decade, if you wanted Vince D'Angona's French onion soup, you needed cash. His restaurant, Crockery Café & Infusery on White Mountain Boulevard in Pinetop-Lakeside, never took cards. Regulars didn't seem to mind. They checked his daily specials on Facebook, showed up before he sold out, and ordered whatever he was running that day, especially on Wednesdays, when it was usually the chicken chili verde that won him the White Mountain Chili Cookoff back in 2020.
That version of D'Angona is gone from Pinetop-Lakeside now. According to the White Mountain Independent, he left Crockery Café last year, and he has spent the months since building a new kitchen inside the clubhouse a lot of Torreon residents already treat as a second living room: the Torreon Grille, overlooking the eighteenth green of the Tower course.
The Kitchen Change Every Regular Already Noticed
A staffing change at a golf clubhouse doesn't usually register as neighborhood news. This one is different because of where the Grille sits in the rhythm of a Torreon week. It's the room where a Saturday golf foursome ends up after the Tower course, where a pickleball group lands for happy hour, where a hiking group off the community trails stops for a late lunch. It's open to the public, which means it's also where residents bring guests from outside the gates who want to see what the club actually feels like on a Tuesday night, not just what the brochure says.
Change the person running that kitchen, and you change a piece of the community's actual social calendar, not just a line item on a menu.
Before Torreon, Three Jobs Built The Reputation
D'Angona grew up in the San Fernando Valley, one of seven kids, and learned to cook from his father as soon as he was tall enough to reach the top of the stove. He landed in the White Mountains in 2015 and built his local reputation one job at a time before he ever opened a restaurant of his own:
- Two years cooking in the café at Eddie's Country Store
- Three years at the Lion's Den, where he estimates he made around 150,000 of the burgers the place was known for around town
- Several years as owner and chef of Crockery Café & Infusery in Pinetop-Lakeside, where he became the 2020 White Mountain Chili Cookoff champion
He calls what he makes "Comfort-Gourmet Cuisine." It's a phrase that tells you exactly what to expect before you sit down: familiar dishes, executed with more care than the price suggests.
What "Comfort-Gourmet" Actually Tastes Like
At Crockery Café, that meant a four-cheese grilled cheese, a Monte Cristo, a Reuben, French onion soup, air-fried fries, and rotating Italian and Mediterranean specials, all made fresh in a kitchen small enough that D'Angona listed the day's menu on Facebook rather than printing one. He'd tell followers when he was running low on a special so they could get there before it sold out, or ask for a request and try it on the spot.
"At the moment I am tired, but happy."
That was D'Angona's own summary of running a one-man kitchen, back when he first opened Crockery Café. It's a useful data point for what he's bringing to a bigger stage now: someone who built a following on scratch cooking and direct communication with the people eating his food, not on plating theory.
What Regulars Should Watch For Now
Torreon's own description of the Grille still reads the way it has for years: classic American fare, overlooking the eighteenth green, a respite after a day at the club. That's an accurate description of the setting. It says almost nothing about what's actually coming out of the kitchen, which is exactly the gap D'Angona's arrival fills in.
If his track record holds, expect the specials board to start doing more work than the printed menu, the way it did at Crockery Café. Expect soups and chilis that get talked about, not just ordered. And if a chicken chili verde shows up on a Wednesday rotation at some point, know that it's the same recipe that already has a trophy attached to it a few miles down the road in Pinetop-Lakeside.
The setting hasn't changed. The Grille is still the natural stop after golf, the trail, or a pickleball match, still open to the public, still the room with the best view of the Tower course from a table. What changes is who decided what's on the plate when you get there, and that person spent a decade building the kind of reputation regulars actually miss when it moves.
One More Vincenzo To Keep Straight
If you mention D'Angona's name around Pinetop-Lakeside and get a confused look, it's worth clarifying which one you mean. His son, also named Vincenzo D'Angona, works at Pinetop Brewery. Two D'Angonas, two kitchens, easy to mix up if you're new to the area. Only one of them is currently cooking inside the Torreon gates.
A Small Thing That Says Something Larger
None of this changes anything about buying or selling a home in Torreon. But it says something about the kind of place this is: small enough that a chef's move from one restaurant to another becomes news worth tracking, and social enough that the clubhouse kitchen is genuinely part of daily life here, not just an amenity listed in a brochure. That's the version of Torreon that's harder to see from a listing photo and easier to notice once you've actually eaten at the Grille on a random Tuesday.
If you're weighing whether that kind of community rhythm would actually fit how you live, not just how a floor plan looks on paper, Torreon Home Sales spends as much time in the neighborhood as at the closing table. Let's connect.
