Chef & Partner of Cunard Tavern

The multiple pivots that we had to be malleable with throughout the beginning of the pandemic was truly frightening and exciting at the same time. We needed to be able to generate additional revenue streams to offset the lack of dining room service. We turned the restaurant into a lunch takeout window offering lobster rolls. Then we turned it into an oyster bar. Next was the sidewalk cafe. Figuring out how to be flexible and resilient when faced with a seemingly never ending uphill battle was crucial to the survival of the restaurant and keeping our staff employed and insured.

Although my James Beard Award was a singular award, it would have been unobtainable without the help and dedication of an entire team. When the whole crew wants to be better everyday, it allows everyone to grow.

A sense of humor is easily the most vital component to longevity in the industry. You have to be able to smile at stressful situations which, in turn, allows your team to handle stress better.

The best piece of advice that I’ve received in my career was to never change something unless you can make it better. Too many people like to change a dish, a system, or a technique because they’ve grown tired of it. I would only ever change something unless I knew it would make a noticeable upgrade.

I always wanted to be a chef. I started cooking as soon as I could walk. In my late teens, I tried getting away from cooking but it kept pulling me back in. It became apparent that this was the right profession for me when I realized I would think about or talk about food almost constantly. I became obsessed with reading cookbooks and traveling to different cities to try local foods. There wasn’t really anything else that I truly loved doing so it was an easy decision.

Absorbing any and all information is key to growing in this industry. This is a profession where a person can, and should, learn something new every single day. It becomes exciting to see what a new book has to offer or what dishes the new person in the kitchen grew up with. This is something that has exposed me to other foods and cultures and it has allowed me to look at food from a different lens.

The intangibles are what I look for when hiring. The ability to retain information is incredibly important. I love when a young cook tells me that they read cookbooks, keep their knives sharp, and shows a genuine interest in food and cooking. It’s also VERY important that a cook not want to be flashy. I like to think of running a restaurant as throwing a dinner party every night and cooking for ego, frankly, gets in the way of that. A person who is willing to learn how to walk before running will always be a better cook than someone looking to take shortcuts.

For inspiration, I love to travel and see how people cook from city to city. The ingredients from a location generally dictate the food so it’s always revelatory to travel somewhere new.