"Flynn McGarry was 19 years old when he opened his first restaurant, Gem, fresh off teenage stints at Eleven Madison Park, Maaemo (in Norway), and Geranium (in Denmark), which is the kind of place that serves a tasting menu called "The Summer Universe" that lasts three hours and costs, depending on the exchange rate, about $653 per person. McGarry learned a lot from his high-caliber externships."
"Possibly too much. "You look at your food, and you can tell there's a lot of other people's identities in it," McGarry's mentor Daniel Humm once told him, "but there are dishes in here that feel truly unique and like they are your food." The grand project of Gem - and its follow-ups, Gem Wine and Gem Home - was discovering what that food was."
"Cove is McGarry's fantasy restaurant. Every detail has been calibrated to his precise specifications: Before he even had a lease, he'd drafted the place on AutoCAD, which he taught himself. "I'm really trying to create a restaurant that I, as a 10-year-old, would look up to - a restaurant that's able to shoot for the stars." The walls are punctuated by giant oil paintings of herbs and flowers by his friend, the Danish artist Frederik Nystrup-Larsen."
Flynn McGarry opened his first restaurant, Gem, at 19 after externships at high-caliber restaurants including Eleven Madison Park, Maaemo, and Geranium. He absorbed influences from mentors and struggled to identify his own culinary voice, with Daniel Humm noting both derivative elements and uniquely personal dishes. Gem operated in a cramped Lower East Side storefront that constrained creative development. McGarry conceived Cove as a durable, fantasy restaurant designed to express his authentic vision: he drafted plans in AutoCAD, integrated large herb-and-flower oil paintings, and physically built furniture frames to maintain hands-on engagement while complying with subcontractor insurance limits.
Read at Grub Street
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]