Chef Carlos Pugliese had no interest in cooking another batch of ranchero sauce, not after 24 years of blissful retirement, mostly on the fairways of Boca Dunes Golf and Country Club. But when he learned of the sudden closing of Carlos & Pepe’s — the beloved Fort Lauderdale Mexican cantina he cofounded in 1979, touching off a whirlwind, cross-country career from South Florida to California and back — Pugliese dropped his clubs and grabbed a phone. “I called my friend Burt Rapoport and said, ‘Burt, can you believe our restaurant is closing?’” Pugliese tells the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
“And I said to him, ‘It’s heartbreaking,’ ” Rapoport, a veteran restaurateur (Max’s Grille, Deck 84), recalls in a separate interview. “So me and Carlos went out to lunch and got talking about the old days and I asked, ‘Do you still do some cooking?’ He said yes, so I said, ‘It’s summertime, not much is going on. How about we bring back Carlos & Pepe’s together?’ ” Now Pugliese, 81, is coming out of retirement for two nights only to salute the restaurant that jump-started his career.
He’ll be up to his eyeballs in cilantro, cumin and dry guajillo chiles, which flavor the savory ranchero sauce that smothers his blue crab enchiladas. It’s one of 15 Mexican entrees — spun from his 1979 book of recipes — being served during two “Carlos Returns!” pop-up dinners on Wednesday and Thursday, Aug. 28-29, at Max’s Grille in Boca Raton.
The menu wil.
