From the late Anthony Bourdain’s name-making book, Kitchen Confidential, to the current streaming phenom The Bear, the inner workings of professional kitchens have long been a source of fascination. Now, some of America’s best restaurants have taken that idea a step further, blurring the line between the dining room and the kitchen to offer a front-row seat to the culinary action.
The concept moves beyond the chef’s table by involving every diner in the room. Douglas Keane, of Michelin-starred Cyrus in Geyserville, Calif., says he designed his kitchen to be spacious enough for everyone to take a closer look, with “seven-foot aisles so guest and chef can make genuine connections over food,” adding that the layout makes for a more relaxed environment. Here, four dining destinations that invite you all the way in.
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Georgia Boy | Atlanta
Chef Joey Ward’s culinary speakeasy is a restaurant within a restaurant, hidden inside the exposed-brick expanse of his other space, Southern Belle. The first two courses are served in an anteroom, after which you sleuth out the secret door that leads to the main event. Diners at the pair of eight-top tables here have a direct view of the culinary team, with a convivial vibe encouraging interaction. The 12-course meal presents playfully nostalgic riffs on Southern culture: One dish features a tomato-sandwich macaroon and a sorbet chaser, a nostalgic ode to childhood summers spent playing in the yard and drinking from the garden hose. But the fan favorite is an haute cuisine take on the beef hot dog (inspired by the Varsity, a local diner chain) with a brioche bun, caviar, chowchow, and crème fraîche. From $255 per person
Cyrus | Geyserville, Calif.
The Cyrus experience was designed as an alternative to the three-hour seated tasting: “People get antsy sitting that long,” says Keane. Meals begin in the lounge with five courses conceived to hit all of your taste receptors—salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami—one at a time. Then, you’re escorted to the kitchen table, where you can watch the culinary team prepare dishes ranging from an inventive eggplant Jell-O to Wagyu with fermented chili paste. A third set of elegant bites is served in the glass-walled dining room overlooking the nearby vineyards. The final stop is the Chocolate Room, a moody Willy Wonka–esque space anchored by a wall of flowing chocolate. From $295 per person
Jônt | Washington, D.C.
Executive chef Ryan Ratino says he always wanted a small restaurant where he could geek out on ingredients and techniques alongside diners. His team of young chefs puts on a nightly show behind a 17-seat counter as old-school hip-hop bumps throughout the space. The atmosphere is decidedly unfussy—even if the dishes, which earned Ratino two Michelin stars, require finesse. Take onagadai (a long-tail snapper served with green tomato, cucumber, and bafun uni) or the wild red sika deer he plans to serve this fall with a triple preparation of red matsutake mushroom. Ratino says of the approach, “We like to be elite but not elitist.” From $375 per person
Smyth | Chicago
John and Karen Shields, the husband-and-wife co-owners who serve as executive chef and executive pastry chef, respectively, bring a mind-bending blend of artistry to roughly 20 courses. There’s no line between the kitchen and dining room, because they want you to feel as if you’re dining in someone’s home—albeit one that serves quail-egg and sea-lettuce tart with German osetra caviar followed by a dessert of spruce ganache with blueberries and candied pickled pine cone. The cuisine is stunning, befitting the restaurant’s three Michelin stars, but it’s the steady stream of in-depth table-side explanations on ingredients and technique from the engaging culinary team that keeps things welcoming. From $475 per person
Turning Down the Heat
Professional kitchens are notoriously high-octane environments with a reputation for drama—it’s why they make for such compelling entertainment—but operating in front of guests requires a level of restraint. “We’re nine feet away from you at any time,” says Jônt’s Ryan Ratino. “It brings a certain discipline to the environment.”
His general manager, Andrew Elder, notes that Jônt’s crew is trained “both on the culinary side and on the service side on how to maintain composure in these moments.” If things go awry, the staff looks for ways to defuse the tension quickly, without letting things boil over. “Time to ask questions about what or how it happened can come later,” Elder says. “Our guests come first, and we can’t waste time blaming an individual for a mistake or berating that person.”
At Cyrus, “if a chef needs a moment to recalibrate, they go outside, look at the view, realize we work in the most beautiful place in the world, and take a deep breath,” says Douglas Keane. “We process mistakes and issues internally and think about things intelligently.”
It cuts down on what Ratino calls “all of the screaming and pan throwing.” Despite the popularity of shows such as The Bear and others, in reality, he says, “no one wants to be around that shit.”
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