FSR May 2023

CHEFS & INGREDIENTS CHEF PROFILE

Serra walk out the door and throw the sandwich in the trash. It turned out Serra was evaluating Kaysen’s work ethic and customer service skills. “In his mind, he was just sort of watching me interact with these guests or customers,” he recalls. Serra told Kay sen he had a “real gift with food,” and that he had the potential to cook for a living. Kaysen went on to work for Serra at Pasta Time, where he “fell in love with everything about this business, and I knew that I would do this the rest of my life,” he says. At 28, Kaysen began working with famed French chef Daniel Boulud, serv ing as executive chef and director of culi nary operations and overseeing Cafe Boulud in Palm Beach, Florida; Toronto; and New York City. He likens that time in his life to earning his Ph.D. in the food business, and says Boulud “embodies what hospitality is all about.” “He has that talent that very few peo ple have, that he connects with so many people throughout his company that are not only willing to walk through a wall for him, but are inspired by him and through him on a daily basis,” Kaysen says about Boulud. In addition to emulating that sen timent with his chefs and team mem bers at his own restaurants under Soigne Hospitality, Kaysen also brought back with him the French idea of prioritizing a locally- and seasonally-driven menu. “For us, we took a pretty prominent stance in understanding the grain cul ture here,” he says. “And in our case, pas tas, the bread program that we focus on, the proteins such as duck when that’s in season, pork, which is always in season … we tend to kind of stay in our Midwest ern lane that way.” For example, one of the sides at Spoon and Stable is creamy spinach with cheese curds—which might not work as well in a place like New York, Kaysen notes. “We want to be a little bit playful, we want to be a little bit whimsical, but we also just really want the food to be deli cious,” he adds. “And ultimately, I think that’s what it comes down to—how do you create delicious food?”

CHEF GAVIN KAYSEN WANTED TO CREATE A COOKBOOK PEOPLE WOULD ACTUALLY USE. NOW, HE RECEIVES PHOTOS FROM READERS WHO COOKED HIS DISHES TO NEAR PERFECT REPLICATION.

LIBBY ANDERSON

Kaysen’s class was averaging more than 1,000 people, cooking alongside him in their homes. After reopening his restau rants, however, Kaysen no longer had time to host GK at Home, which sparked the idea to turn all the content he cre ated into a cookbook. “We were testing out the recipes with real people, so we were learning in real time, ‘oh, you know what, you can’t just say salt, tell them what kind of salt; you can’t just tell them two to four minutes, you’ve got to tell them what it’s supposed to look like, what does it feel like,” Kay sen notes. “We just started to learn all these really fascinating things that as a chef, when I cook at home, I don’t even think about.” “Now I get messages on Instagram from people that have cooked dishes from my book, take a picture of their dish and the book, and it looks the same. And it’s like, oh my god, it worked,” he adds. “I really wanted to create a book that people will use; a lot of chefs create cookbooks that nobody will use.”

Kaysen admits reopening his res taurants felt “50 times more di cult” than closing them down. Remember ing routines and re-training employees felt especially daunting as customers returned in droves, hungrier than ever for hospitality and a greatly-missed din ing experience. “I think COVID did give a peek into our ecosystem where people could look at it and say, wow, I guess I didn’t real ize all of this was associated with a res taurant,” he says. Embodying hospitality Kaysen’s foodservice career kicked o when he was 15 years old and began working at a Subway in Edina, Minne sota. ere, he learned the value of being detail-oriented, especially when it came to interacting with guests. When reg ulars came in, Kaysen had their orders memorized—including a tuna sh sand wich for George Serra, the owner of the fast-casual pasta restaurant next door. But every Saturday, Kaysen would watch

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MAY 2023