Spotlight On: Curtis Duffy, Rising Star Restaurant Chef

By Derek Gale, Senior Associate Editor -- Hotels, 5/22/2008 8:02:00 AM

Curtis Duffy, 32, is the new chef de cuisine for the award-winning Avenues restaurant at The Peninsula Chicago. A veteran of such world-renown fine-dining restaurants as Charlie Trotter’s and Alinea, Duffy brings “thoughtful, progressive” cuisine to Avenues, with the goals of using “the most pristine ingredients we can get our hands on” and “trying to garner a fifth Mobil star.” Duffy took a few minutes to talk with HOTELS about where he gets his inspiration, and about working in a hotel restaurant for the first time.

HOTELS: What was your first kitchen job?

DUFFY: I worked in a little Greek restaurant in small town and washed dishes for $15 a day. I was 13 years old—I worked four hours a night after school. Now that think back on it, it is very silly, but I was fascinated that the chef would boil potatoes still in their skins and have me peel them while they were hot. I was fascinated that the skin almost fell off and left a soft, smooth potato. My goal was to see how many potatoes I could get completely smooth.

HOTELS: What would you say jump-started your career?

DUFFY: In Columbus (Ohio) I worked at some really high-end restaurants and really good private golf clubs—I had solid training. The private golf clubs had a lot of money, and in the three months when they were closed, I was able to travel or just to play with food. That was exciting.

HOTELS: How do you feel about working in a hotel restaurant now versus a free-standing one?

DUFFY: That’s a good question because this is the first hotel restaurant I’ve worked in. But we’ve taken the approach to try to… not separate ourselves from hotel itself, but rather in our daily operation—the way we run and the way we manage people—make it almost a free-standing restaurant. It’s really a mindset more than anything.

HOTELS: When you arrived at Avenues six weeks ago, what did you think of the kitchen and the equipment in it? Did you change anything?

DUFFY: When I came in, I actually changed quite a bit of the kitchen layout, taking out some equipment and replacing it with tabletops, and making it more efficient for the style of cuisine we plan to do. That has been fairly easy to do. The working space itself is very small—five guys in my kitchen is tight. Give us another 20 feet on both sides and we’d be set.

HOTELS: What is your style of cuisine?

DUFFY: Thoughtful progressive. Thoughtful meaning we put a great amount of time and effort into the food we produce day to day and the thought process behind the dishes on menu. Progressive meaning taking new techniques and utilizing them to our advantage to make cuisine interesting. But we are standing firm in using the most pristine ingredients we can get our hands on. That’s at the forefront of our cuisine. It’s not so much technique—that’s secondary to us. It’s really about ingredients.

HOTELS: That said, what are your favorite ingredients to work with?

DUFFY: One of my favorite ingredients is Kaffir lime, but unfortunately there is no Kaffir lime on my menu. I also feel very strongly about salt. I have about 35 different types of salt with amazing different flavors, textures and smells. Salt is a huge ingredient for us.

HOTELS: How does your background at two of the world’s top restaurants inform your work at Avenues?

DUFFY: Anywhere you travel and anywhere you’ve been always plays a huge role in what you bring to the table. Everywhere you work is who you are. From working at Charlie’s, it’s the constant idea of making things better—how you can change to make things more efficient or how you can search out the best ingredients possible—does this farmer have a better ingredient than the next farmer? That’s really what was instilled in me at Charlie’s—searching out the best ingredients. Something Grant [Achatz] taught me is the limitless creativity he allows every one of his cooks to have. You could bring to the table the craziest idea ever and not feel embarrassed about it.

HOTELS: How do you continue to learn today?

DUFFY: The Internet is a huge asset to what we do from a day-to-day standpoint. I am always looking for ideas, not necessarily people’s ideas, but interesting ideas or techniques around the thought process. I have a whole bookmark on my computer of people who just write about creative thinking. It has nothing to do with food; it’s just a way of thinking about things at different angle. It’s about reading and keeping up with your peers and seeing what you can do better.

HOTELS: Speaking of your peers, how do you feel about competing with some of the new hotel restaurants in Chicago—like Sixteen at the Trump International Hotel & Tower or C-House at the Affinia Chicago?

DUFFY: I think we’re playing at higher level. What we do here at Avenues is more refined. I don’t want to knock these chefs—they are amazing chefs. But we pay more attention to detail. I can’t believe I’ve only been here six weeks and we’re doing the food we’re doing. It is blowing people away, which is a great feeling.

HOTELS: What do you think of Chicago in general as a food city?

DUFFY: I think we have more high-end, fine-dining restaurants than probably anywhere in the U.S. Las Vegas has every chef known to man there, but those are all their secondary restaurants. They are there for the money, no question about that. San Francisco has some amazing restaurants, and New York is obviously amazing too, but the level we play at is different than any other city. I think our clientele and population here is really educated in food and is really trusting in what we do—they let us do what we want. 

HOTELS: So where do you see yourself in three to five years?

DUFFY: I see myself five years from now opening my own restaurant in Chicago. I love the city—it’s just a matter of time.