Gavin Kaysen shares his experience as a restaurateur, competitor, and caterer for athletes

Chef Gavin Kaysen is the founder of Soigné Hospitality Group in Minneapolis, which operates Spoon & Stable, Demi, Mara, and Socca Café restaurants in that city as well as three Bellecour Bakery locations. He also runs two catering companies. Spoon Thief Catering, named for the award-winning chef’s penchant for collecting silverware, is available for anyone to hire. KZ Provisioning caters to athletes, specifically the professional hockey players of the Minnesota Wild and the men and women basketball players of the Timberwolves and the Lynx. Kaysen is also a TV chef, having competed on The Next Iron Chef, Iron Chef, and Chopped All Stars. He has been a judge on Top Chef and was culinary producer of the reboot of Iron Chef on Netflix. He has won two James Beard Foundation awards, for Rising Star Chef in 2008 when he was executive chef of Café Boulud in New York City, and Best Chef: Midwest in 2018 after he relocated to his hometown. He also represented the United States in the biennial Bocuse d’Or competition in Lyon, France, in 2007, and continues to mentor American competitors for that event. The chef recently self-published a cookbook, At Home by Gavin Kaysen, which is currently being reprinted because the first edition sold out. Kaysen discussed his experiences with all of that and shared his plans for the winter.