Kitchens: Better With a Super Chef?

By JULIETTE ROSSANT In The San Francisco Chronicle cited in the previous posting (see previous article), a long-running question arose, also addressed in Super Chef (see especially pp. 85-86): does a kitchen produce superior food when the chef-restaurateur is in the kitchen? Certainly, a great kitchen helps make for great food (like the Jean-Georges Vongericthen kitchen in Dune, on the right, rendered by Mark Stech-Novak Restaurant Consultation and Design), but does the cooking line produce better food when a super chef is in his or her own kitchen? The Chronicle partly credits the improvement at Dry Creek Kitchen to Charlie Palmer's on-premise presence after moving his family to Healdsburg from New York last year. Having assumed management of his investment, the boutique Hotel Healdsburg, Charlie is around much of the time, just as when his flagship Aureole in New York was home base -- especially since he used to live upstairs in the same building. (I cite Charlie here because [1] I raised the same subject in his Super Chef profile and [2] he's a big and strong enough guy -- in terms of professional quality -- to easily bear repeated scrutiny.) So is The Chronicle right, that kitchens are better with a super chef present? In theory the answer is "no": a kitchen produces as well with or without the physical presence of its chef-restaurateur when it has been well trained. What comes out of the kitchen is an interpretation of a chef's signature, except for those nights when the top chef is on the line. Great kitchens are headed by great chefs -- but they are run by great teams. Furthermore, how many executive chefs in super chef restaurants have gone on to open their own successful restaurants? Off the top of my head (and no offense to anyone who did not happen to come to mind)? Kerry Simon left Jean-Georges to open Simon Kitchen and Bar. Eric Klein left Wolfgang Puck to open first his own restaurant, Maple Drive, and now again to open at the new Steve Wynn property this year. Don Pintabonna left Charlie Palmer to open the highly acclaimed Tribeca Grill and is now an advisor to Innovative Food Holdings (see previous article), while colleague Gerry Hayden came back to Charlie as executive chef at Aureole and then moved on to open Amuse, which he is preparing to re-open with wunder-wife and pastry chef Claudia Fleming. The success of these executive chefs as chef-restaurateurs on their own bespeaks what they learned in the kitchens of super (and other) chefs. (Of course, you might archly point out that these particular chefs are no longer in those super chef kitchens...) My own experience, however, tends to indicate otherwise -- or is that something subconscious that many people experience when they know whether the top chef is on the kitchen? Certainly, I have had great food at great restaurants with a famed chef absent, but that seems to happen less often than not. This is not a name-naming game -- but is it a mind game? The only way to "prove" this rather subjective issue would be to run a serious "blind survey." Maybe the IACP or James Beard Foundation might be appropriate venues for this kind of research, to resolve this question. If anyone is interested, then I, having made the suggestion, would be interested in participating. Previous articles: Charlie Palmer: Dry Creek Kitchen Floweth Jeffrey Chodorow: Talent Agent Les Enfantes Terribles devient terriblement vieux Nick Valenti: Super Chef Master? Don Pintabona Advises Innovation --> back to superchefblog