YOU ENTRUST your dinner to them, so doesn’t it make sense to ask your favorite local chefs which up-and-coming
cooks they think are talented? We checked in with restaurant vets Jody Adams, Robert Fathman, Marc Orfaly, Bill Poirier, and Jeremy Sewall about the young, still-under-the-radar talent working in kitchens all over Boston.
Colin Lynch, executive sous chef at No. 9 Park
We can’t imagine that it’s easy for one chef to impress another as talented as Barbara Lynch. But Marc Orfaly, chef/owner of Marco and Pigalle, saw it happen. Not only that, he shared her sentiments. Who was it? Colin Lynch, who serves as executive sous chef for Barbara Lynch (no relation) at No. 9 Park (9 Park Street, Boston, 617.742.9991). “Barbara and I and a few friends of ours all went to eat at No. 9, and [Colin Lynch] cooked for us — stuff that wasn’t on the menu,” remembers Orfaly. “Everything was great. It was really great to see a young chef like that taking the reins and doing his thing — even Barbara was impressed. I thought that was cool.”
Culinarily speaking, Colin Lynch has taken a traditional route: in high school, he worked summer jobs cooking in Newburyport, which led to his enrollment at the Culinary Institute of America. From there, he scored a three-month externship at No. 9 Park; after graduation, he worked briefly at B&G Oysters until a full-time position at No. 9 opened up. And that brings us to the present: Colin Lynch has spent almost four years toiling in the storied downtown kitchen, and with Barbara Lynch’s new Seaport District projects on the horizon, he hopes to log at least five more with the company. Though he claims he didn’t really know how to cook until he came to No. 9 — “It was a whole new world of intricacies and intensity and just perfection” — Lynch describes his style as “steeped in French technique” with a strong focus on the seasonality of ingredients. But when it comes down to it, “most of what I’ve learned is through Chef Barbara, and her style really comes through me.” Lynch is a fan of Craigie Street Bistrot, KO Prime, and O Ya, and you might also catch him on a 4 a.m. Chinatown run for salt-and-pepper shrimp. But what makes him a great chef is his willingness to learn. “It’s just been an incredible experience,” he says, “and it’s really what drives the restaurant, the ability to teach and be taught.”
Nick Terrafranca, executive chef at 28 Degrees
Jeremy Sewall, chef/owner of Lineage, has done some consulting work for 28 Degrees (One Appleton Street, Boston, 617.728.0728). He still helps out at the South End lounge from time to time, but the kitchen is truly executive chef Nick Terrafranca’s territory — and Sewall considers him supremely qualified. “He’s a young man who’s just really committed to the craft and committed to the business,” says Sewall, who also notes that Terrafranca is easy to work with and has “a great leadership quality,” especially for a young chef. (Terrafranca is 30.) “[Nick] has a great food sense; he knows when to add a little bit or stop when it comes to preparing dishes. He’s proven [that] to me time and time again, every time I go over there to eat. His food comes from the heart; it doesn’t come from trends or pages of magazines. He cooks solid food with a solid foundation.”
Terrafranca began his career as a sort of traveling chef, which he describes as his “have whisk, will travel” phase. He’d work six months here, six months there, hitting cities including Colorado Springs, Washington, DC, San Francisco, and Portland, Oregon, and fitting his studies at the New England Culinary Institute somewhere in between. His first gig in Boston was as line cook and then sous chef at Grotto; from there, he helped open 28 Degrees, where his menu is intensely seasonal and each dish is created to be shared. “Your perfect dining experience at 28 Degrees,” says Terrafranca, “would be to sit down with a couple of friends and have a couple half-carafes of wine or cocktails while you enjoy a slow yet steady parade of food.” He’s a disciplined, detail-oriented chef, but he’s also learned to relax and let his ingredients shine. “I go back to my Italian roots and simplicity,” he explains, “letting quality ingredients speak for themselves on the plate, and doing lots of little things — rather than several big things — to ingredients to improve where I can.” As for what’s up next, Terrafranca is still thinking about it. “It’s a question I’ve been asking myself for quite some time,” he says. “I really want to just learn. It’s going to be more exploring who I am as a chef and as a cook, what kind of style is really mine and not anybody else’s. But I think that that’s a challenge that chefs go through their whole lives.”
Ben Hennemuth, chef at the Harp
When Ben Hennemuth worked as Robert Fathman’s chef de cuisine at the now-defunct Anthem, Fathman, who’s currently the executive chef at Azure, found him “an easy guy to work with. He’s not a raging lunatic like some people that happen to be in the kitchen — just a calm, cool, collected type of dude.” That attitude translates to the cuisine that comes off Hennemuth’s line. “His food is the kind of food I like to eat,” Fathman says. “It’s comfortable without being predictable.” After Anthem closed its doors, Hennemuth was brought on at the Harp (85 Causeway Street, Boston, 617.742.1010) to inject the sports bar’s menu with some fresh ideas — and Fathman is impressed with the results. “[Ben] is encompassing this casual, new American cuisine,” he says. “And when it comes to the integrity of the product, the balance of flavors in his dishes, I think that he’s doing a great job.”
Hennemuth’s early training might come from the family-style dinners he prepared for his UMass Amherst dorm and a college course on the “Anthropology of Food,” but none of that matters now. He developed his technique working at Anthem under Fathman, and he’s applying what he learned there — “a free-spirited approach to sophisticated food” — to the menu overhaul he’s just debuted at the Harp. Hennemuth says the new dishes are “recognizable as comfort food” and “approachable” with a “fresh twist,” but they still reflect the Harp and its customer base. Highlights include pulled-pork wontons with chipotle-honey barbecue sauce, nachos made with tortillas fried in-house, and a classed-up American chop suey — all a serious improvement on typical bar fare. Hennemuth develops menu items based on what he’s been eating, what he’s been craving, and what’s fresh. “You don’t have to do a lot to support something that is already inherently good and flavorful,” he explains.
Jason Maynard, line cook at Troquet
As one of chef Bill Poirier’s sous chefs at Sonsie, Jason Maynard was “very eager to learn,” according to his former boss. “[He] really absorbs what goes on” and has a strong palate that’s enhanced by his intuitive understanding of how flavors interact. But what really stands out for Poirier is Maynard’s post-Sonsie career move: he left his sous-chef position at the Back Bay hotspot for a line-cook job at the smaller, more upscale Troquet (140 Boylston Street, Boston, 617.695.9463). “Being exposed to a busy restaurant like Sonsie, that was a great foundation for [Jason],” Poirier says. “He decided, now, to step in a direction of doing a smaller, finer-dining establishment, where it’s not such a hurried pace and there’s more involvement in ingredients, plate presentation. I think that was a great career move on his part.”
So who is Jason Maynard? A former UMass Amherst student, Maynard opted to attend the New England Culinary Institute, landing at Sonsie for his second-year internship and staying on after graduation. He considers his time at Troquet a learning experience; he’s there to try his hand at a different style of food and for the restaurant’s reliance on top-notch products. “I just cook with my heart, if you can call that a technique,” Maynard says of his approach. As for what his future holds, “it’s still kind of undecided. It’s up in the air.” Maynard will stick around in Boston as long as there’s more for him to learn here — and he thinks there will be. His ultimate goal is to own his own place, but that’s about more than just the food. “I’d want a place that has a performance space, where there would be live music,” he muses. “Fairly small, very casual, organic sandwiches and maybe some sort of pasta dishes. More of a place just to go and hang out than a place to go and eat.” For a guy raised on grilled cheese and “simple food,” that sounds spot-on.
David Punch, chef at Ten Tables
Jody Adams, chef/owner of Rialto, first met David Punch when he worked in the nearby kitchen at UpStairs on the Square. “I was struck by his passion, energy, and sense of humor,” Adams says. “The food they produced was fabulous. David always seemed to be willing to take chances and push the culinary envelope, without making wacky food.” Now that Punch is the chef at Ten Tables (597 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain, 617.524.8810), Adams makes the journey there for his wild boar sausage with juniper-braised sauerkraut. (“Tremendous,” she notes.) Says Adams, “[David’s] choice to work at Ten Tables shows a commitment to working with the best ingredients and treating them with respect. And since it is such a tiny place where all hands are used, there is no doubt he loves to cook.”
Punch’s start in the industry was less than glamorous: he washed dishes and worked the counter at sub shops throughout high school in Natick, ending up at a burrito place in Vermont in his early 20s. Fine dining or not, it whetted his appetite for cooking, and he headed back to Boston for a culinary course at BU. Just six years later, with stints at the Nightingale, UpStairs, and Rendezvous under his belt, he’s at the helm of Ten Tables, where, he says, “I’m just really freaking proud of the fact that we try our hardest every day to give [our customers] the most affordable fine-dining kind of cuisine in Boston.” His enthusiasm for the job is infectious, but Punch is a grounded guy. He describes his specialty as “food that tastes good” and says his ultimate goal is “to keep cooking food that people want to keep eating.” @
[Photos by Tim Gray for Furnald/Gray]
