How Cancer Inspired One Chef to Truly Live His Life
Stephen McHugh poses with wife (and Cured co-owner) Sylvia. Photo: Cured
For weeks in late 2009, Stephen McHugh couldn’t make sense of it: He’d wake up in the mornings with a face so swollen that his eyelids were nearly forced shut. But McHugh isn’t a prizefighter. He’s a chef.
At the time, McHugh had worked for chef John Besh in New Orleans for about a decade, and he’d just been given a tremendous opportunity: Bring Besh’s old fashioned German-style brasserie, Lüke, to San Antonio, Texas. McHugh jumped at the chance. But before he left, he went to see several doctors about the mystery facial swelling. They didn’t have any answers, but one suggested he see an allergist — maybe he’d developed an allergy to his pillow?
“The allergist was smart enough to call for a CT scan, and there it was,” McHugh recalled. A tumor growing in his chest, which had wrapped itself around the veins that released blood from his head. It was non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and it explained the facial swelling. “And she said, ‘You need to go to the emergency room right now.’ We were like, ‘Holy shit.’”
John Besh and Steven McHugh pose before taping a morning show in San Antonio. Photo: Lüke San Antonio River Walk/Facebook
McHugh didn’t know what to do. He was scheduled to move to San Antonio in a mere month. Should he stay in New Orleans? Should he abandon his plans to help open Lüke? While searching for the answers, McHugh consulted a doctor in San Antonio. “He said, ‘One thing I can tell you is the last thing anybody wants you to do is to stop living your life,’” McHugh recalled. “And it was just really good advice. I thought to myself, ‘Yeah, you know what? This isn’t a death sentence.’”
So McHugh and his wife Sylvia packed up and moved to San Antonio, where he soon began the first of his eight chemo treatments. It was brutal. McHugh lost his hair, his nails turned blue, and he was perpetually exhausted. All the while, he was opening a restaurant.
A charcuterie plate at Cured in San Antonio, Texas. Photo: Cured
“I think sometimes, as chefs, we don’t realize when to slow down,” McHugh said with a laugh. But he’d planned it well: McHugh scheduled his hours around his treatments and found an apartment just three blocks from work. “I could go down to the restaurant for a couple hours and deal with things” — whether that meant looking at a blueprints, making sure the kitchen was constructed correctly, or interviewing purveyors or potential employees — “and then I would go home for a couple hours and sleep. My wife would make something for me to eat.”
McHugh soldiered on. The Besh restaurant opened, and his treatments ended. Now came the question of what to do next. “It kind of clicked to me: It’s time to live your life. Not necessarily be ‘the guy behind the guy’ anymore,” McHugh told us. “I had to go out and start seeking my own restaurant.”
During the early days of his treatment, McHugh had been wracked with insomnia. He’d read to pass the time, poring over books about charcuterie, butchery, and fermentation. He didn’t realize it at the time, but they’d planted the kernel for his next project: Cured, a charcuterie-centric restaurant in San Antonio, Texas.
Cured’s lit-up exterior. Photo: Cured
The name has a double meaning. The restaurant, which operates inside the old Pearl Brewery, certainly focuses on charcuterie; all cured hams, salamis, and copicola are made in-house. They hang in a 9-by-11-foot curing case, which is planted in the middle of the dining room for all to see. But for McHugh, “Cured” also has a literal meaning. Today, his cancer is in remission.
Back in May, McHugh told Yahoo Food that he has “one more CAT-SCAN next month, and that should be my last one.” If everything goes well, his cancer has only a one-percent chance of returning.
The display case at Cured. Photo: Cured
Now open for a year and a half, Cured’s dining room is often filled to capacity. It’s been dubbed one of the “hottest” charcuterie restaurants in the country, and the local press is completely enamored with it. McHugh is happy for the success, but his illness has made him see work in a new light.
“We don’t necessarily hire somebody based on how talented they are,” McHugh explained. “We just want to surround ourselves with really great people. I think because of that, we end up putting out really great food, really good service, and an all-around great product.”
More uplifting stories from the food world:
How you’re saving the world by eating Ben & Jerry’s
15 ways to eat more sustainably in 2015
Growing Warriors, an organization that turns veterans into farmers
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