A former NFL football player turned chef is coming to Maryland to open his first restaurant, which will be located just a few minutes away from where he grew up.
Chef Tobias Dorzon will open Huncho House on Sept. 9 in Hyattsville, just minutes away from his hometown of Riverdale.
“You know, it’s almost like when I was playing football as a child, you always want to play for your home team,” Dorzon said.
Dorzon played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Tennessee Titans, and also in the Canadian Football League, before moving into the culinary world. The former football player received national attention for his cooking while on Guy Fieri’s “Tournament of Champions.”
“He said I was a chef playing football,” Dorzon recalled Fieri saying about him on the show.
Dorzon said that was a true statement, as he has been cooking since a young age. His father was a chef and Dorzon spent time working in his father’s restaurant as a child.
“So you know, the transition from football to cooking wasn’t really as hard as people make it seem because culinary was something I always loved,” Dorzon said.
After going to culinary school, including the Italian Culinary Institute in Sicily, he said his restaurant will mix what he learned there with flavors from his West African roots. Both his parents were born in Liberia.
The name, according to Dorzon, comes from a name he was given by a general manager he worked with. The manager called him the “head honcho,” and Dorzon said he would later turn that into “Huncho House” in a sign at his home. Now, the name is going public.
The restaurant on America Boulevard will bring fine dining to Hyattsville and also offer Prince George’s County its first chef’s table, where diners can watch and get served by the chefs.
“I want everybody to come in and be able to touch your palate in different ways that you normally wouldn’t be able to,” Dorzon said.
Dorzon who now lives in Houston said he will now split his time between Hyattsville and Texas.
