Yet another high-profile chef is trading the Michelin stars he helped earn in a bigger city to come set up shop in Detroit instead. Garden City native Jared Gadbaw left Michigan 18 years ago to pursue his culinary ambitions in New York City, where he trained at the French Culinary Institute after spending most of his youth working at a Dearborn car dealership with his father.
“You’re young and you think this’ll be easy,” Gadbaw, 40, recalled of his big move. “I thought I’ll learn to cook in two years and go back to Michigan to become a smashing success.” Those callow dreams gave way to a star-turning two-decade run through some of the Big Apple’s best restaurants, first on the hot line at fine-dining gems like Esca and Eleven Madison Park.
But in 2007, Gadbaw answered a Craigslist ad that would set the course of his life for the next 10 years. More restaurant news: Michelin-starred chef Thomas Lents offers fine dining in firehouse-turned-hotel Chef Michael White, who had just begun growing his own culinary empire, hired Gadbaw as a sous chef for his Italian restaurant Alto. As Gadbaw tells it, after a year at Alto, White brought up the idea of opening a seafood restaurant to rival the likes of Estiatorio […]
