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Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

May 2, 2023

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It’s an exciting time to be a chef. Yes, the cost of everything continues to rise and we haven’t worked out all the kinks that the pandemic inflicted on our supply chain, but running restaurants has always been hard. Now, at least, there are customers who are eager to see chefs display their creativity, and to explore foods they might never have tried before.

That’s the focus of this year’s Chef Power List.

We’re highlighting chefs who are expanding the boundaries of the type of food available in restaurants.

That includes the team of Evelyn Garcia and Henry Lu of Jūn in Houston, who bring their Latin-American and Southeast Asian background, and fine-dining training, to their restaurant.

It also includes Phillip Frankland Lee and Margarita Kallas-Lee of Scratch Restaurants, who are showing the world exactly how much can be done in-house.

Laura Meyer of Pizzeria de Laura in Berkeley, Calif., is sharing her love of slow-fermenting pizza dough to the world, and Ambrely Ouimette of Sushi | Bar in Austin, Texas, whose kitchen was originally led by the Lees, is putting her own spin on Omakase.

Oscar Padilla of Gaucho Parilla in Arvada, Colo., is highlighting Argentine cuisine, and in Milford, N.H., Chris Viaud is celebrating is Haitian heritage at Ansamn.

Kevin Tien, the chef of Moon Rabbit in Washington, D.C., is melding his Louisiana upbringing and Vietnamese heritage, and Yia Vang is showcasing Hmong cuisine through an upper Midwestern lens at Union Hmong Kitchen and Vinai in Minneapolis.

Read on to learn more about these chefs who are making their communities better places to eat.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] 

About the Author

Bret Thorn

Senior Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News

Senior Food & Beverage Editor

Bret Thorn is senior food & beverage editor for Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality for Informa’s Restaurants and Food Group, with responsibility for spotting and reporting on food and beverage trends across the country for both publications as well as guiding overall F&B coverage. 

He is the host of a podcast, In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn, which features interviews with chefs, food & beverage authorities and other experts in foodservice operations.

From 2005 to 2008 he also wrote the Kitchen Dish column for The New York Sun, covering restaurant openings and chefs’ career moves in New York City.

He joined Nation’s Restaurant News in 1999 after spending about five years in Thailand, where he wrote articles about business, banking and finance as well as restaurant reviews and food columns for Manager magazine and Asia Times newspaper. He joined Restaurant Hospitality’s staff in 2016 while retaining his position at NRN. 

A magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in history, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Thorn also studied traditional French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He spent his junior year of college in China, studying Chinese language, history and culture for a semester each at Nanjing University and Beijing University. While in Beijing, he also worked for ABC News during the protests and ultimate crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thorn’s monthly column in Nation’s Restaurant News won the 2006 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for best staff-written editorial or opinion column.

He served as president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, in 2005.

Thorn wrote the entry on comfort food in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd edition, published in 2012. He also wrote a history of plated desserts for the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, published in 2015.

He was inducted into the Disciples d’Escoffier in 2014.

A Colorado native originally from Denver, Thorn lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Bret Thorn’s areas of expertise include food and beverage trends in restaurants, French cuisine, the cuisines of Asia in general and Thailand in particular, restaurant operations and service trends. 

Bret Thorn’s Experience: 

Nation’s Restaurant News, food & beverage editor, 1999-Present
New York Sun, columnist, 2005-2008 
Asia Times, sub editor, 1995-1997
Manager magazine, senior editor and restaurant critic, 1992-1997
ABC News, runner, May-July, 1989

Education:
Tufts University, BA in history, 1990
Peking University, studied Chinese language, spring, 1989
Nanjing University, studied Chinese language and culture, fall, 1988 
Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, Cértificat Elémentaire, 1986

Email: [email protected]

Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-thorn-468b663/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bret.thorn.52
Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
Instagram: @foodwriterdiary

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