The Daily Beast: "Meet Flynn McGarry: America's Next Great Chef is 14 Years Old"
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McGarry and BierBeisl chef Bernard Meiringer. (Will McGarry) |
At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Meet Flynn McGarry: America's Next Great Chef is 14 Years Old," in which I sit down with 14-year-old culinary prodigy Flynn McGarry, whose $160 a head supper club and pop-up restaurant Eureka has become destination dining in Los Angeles.(Plus, see my Instagrams of my May 1st meal at McGarry's Eureka and read what McGarry has to say about several specific dishes from the menu.)
A recent 11-course tasting menu at Eureka, a monthly pop-up restaurant at Los Angeles’ BierBeisl, included a dish of fresh and dried English peas concealing a hidden parmesan and whey pudding, a live scallop under a cucumber foam, gnocchi made from ash, and an unctuous sous-vide egg yolk encircled by hedgehog mushrooms, pork skin snow, and a sauce made from preserved lemons and radish greens.
On an evening in early May, this was a meal that showed the precision, vision, and creativity of its gifted chef, one that soared on a deliberate rhythm and flow: plates arrived at just the right moment with an explanation of the dish’s ingredients, each showcasing the season to perfection. The chef, Flynn McGarry, moved in the kitchen with grace, charring ramps for a dish of sturgeon and tapioca with a charred onion sauce before spinning around to sauce a plate—on which quivered a single slice of blood-red dehydrated beet—with just the right amount of raspberry-black pepper vinaigrette.
Without seeing him, you would never know that the chef isn’t old enough to drive.
At 14, McGarry is already a commanding presence in the kitchen. His youth seems at odds with the perfection, skill, and beauty of the dazzling array of dishes that are sent out over the course of this evening in a style that McGarry refers to as “modern American progressive.” McGarry is already something of a culinary wunderkind in Los Angeles, charging $160 a head for Eureka, a monthly dinner that originated in his parents’ home in the San Fernando Valley and now resides at a high-end Austrian restaurant in the heart of Beverly Hills. Over the course of the evening, professional chefs wandered in to take a peek at food being prepared by the culinary prodigy, a term that McGarry himself doesn’t wear easily.
“I’ve come to terms with it,” said McGarry. “I’m not going around comparing myself to Mozart, but I do think that there is a little bit of natural talent… I’m sort of gifted in the way that my taste buds are aligned correctly, which is a really weird way to think. Like any other prodigy, I’ve worked ridiculously hard on this.”
Continue reading at The Daily Beast...