Recipe Station

McGarry was recently profiled by the website Tasting Table, and as the writer of the article notes, McGarry may be young, but he's surprisingly educated and wise. Plus, despite being part of the highly competitive and sometimes cutthroat restaurant industry, he hasn't yet grown cynical.

If his food falls flat, well then he is not unlike hundreds of other chefs in the city who have tried to accomplish what he’s up to at Eureka. And if his food soars, it shall do so independent of the dendrochronology of the sapling in question.

McGarry, about whom so many words have been written, is neither naive nor jaded. He is, rather, both boyishly enthusiastic and slightly guarded. For every feint, every query about how it is indeed possible for a youth so green to sound through food emotions so profound—for that is truly what makes $160 an unlaughable sum for dinner—McGarry has a ready parry. Dismissing the paucity of his life experience as a wellspring for his menu, he says, “Cooking is an art form, and as an art form, it comes from a place you can’t explain.”

And he has a point. There are many older chefs who have not yet located the aquifer that connects life experience with culinary expression. Samely, there is no reason a youth like McGarry couldn’t have happened upon those reservoirs at an earlier point in his life than most.

In fact, the majority of the young chef’s life experience has been culinary experience, making the Venn Diagram of Kitchen Life and Life Life particularly oblong. After his initial well-chronicled experiments at age 10, he has since worked at Alma in Los Angeles and staged throughout Europe. This is, of course, in addition to running his occasional pop-up and running interference from constant critique.

On McGarry’s last trip back east, he was the subject of some quite ugly and revealing criticism from a grisled cohort who objected to his using the word chef. “Chef is something you earn through years of being beaten and shit on and taught by some of the greats,” wrote chef David Santos in an Instagram screed. The statement is at once largely true and profoundly ignorant, and the extent to which it is true belies the ignorance that toxifies the restaurant industry like algal bloom. McGarry has been savaged by the press, most notably the New York Post’s resident curmudgeon, Steve Cuozzo, at whose mention the chef shudders slightly.

McGarry, who was rather severely bullied at school, has built compensatory defenses. That’s one reason, he says, for the tasting menu format. “I know people are going to come in here with their own prejudices and search for things to hate,” he tells me, “so if I can control the menu, then at least I can make sure I’m giving them the best experience I can.”

And if one allows for homeschool, unschool and Waldorf pedagogy, the kitchen, too, has proven fertile ground for education. Through Eureka, McGarry is hitting nearly all of Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences.

Wow! This young chef is indeed quite impressive, and we can't wait to see how his career turns out. If his early success is any indicator, he may well be one of this era's most influential and renowned chefs!

Article & Photo Source: Tasting Table