“Commis for life, man.”
—Kevin Adey
Kevin Adey grew up in Rome, New York, outside of Syracuse, but moved away to Florida when he was twenty. There, he spent over a decade working in kitchens along the West Coast. He focused on working at the best places he could find, eventually rising to sous-chef at contemporary American restaurant Derek’s in Sarasota, FL. Chef and owner Derek Barnes was a semifinalist for the 2009 James Beard Awards, “Best Chef South.” Kevin continued to work in Florida but wanted to test himself in a bigger market and eventually was pulled back to New York.
Soon after returning he took a line cook position at three-Michelin-star restaurant Le Bernardin, the fine dining restaurant considered one of—if not the best—seafood restaurant in the country. Kevin says, “I knew on the third day that this was not what I want to do with the rest of my life.” Running a kitchen with fifty employees did not fit with his management style. He needed a more intimate work environment. But the fifteen months he spent at Le Bernardin, working for the legendary chef Eric Ripert, continues to influence him as a chef to this day. Kevin says, “I credit knowing the difference between good and bad to that place. The good and bad is kind of complicated, but basically working at a top restaurant in a small town is not even close to working at a top restaurant of the world.”
Since taking over as executive chef at Northeast Kingdom, a contemporary American restaurant in Brooklyn, NY, in an outer area called Bushwick, Kevin has slowly changed the menu from jalapeño poppers to something truly special. Focused on seasonal foraging and strong relationships with local farms and organic gardens (including their own rooftop garden), Northeast Kingdom allows Kevin to create menus that extend his love for food out of the kitchen. Showing respect for the care it takes to raise animals, Kevin has slowly committed the restaurant to buying full animals, forcing them to learn how to not waste any food. He say “Every week we get a goat, a pig, and a quarter cow and that’s it.” The menu can rotate daily based on what parts are left as they cook through each cut.
Although Kevin has a lot of tattoos, none of them were food-related until his wife surprised him on his birthday by bringing him to a tattoo parlor. He had the word “commis” tattooed on his wrist. The word refers to the lowest person in the kitchen, a reminder to be a perpetual learner. Kevin firmly believes that we are learning every day, and his tattoo reminds him that no chef is that far from being just any cook and to not stop learning. He says, “You shouldn’t stop learning when you’re the chef. You shouldn’t stop learning when you’re a line cook and the chef de partie and the sous-chef. You always have to believe that there’s more. There’s a better way to do this.” The spirit of his tattoo is a reminder that he is a “commis for life.”
On Kevin’s left forearm is a tattoo of a pig’s head with angel’s wings. The tattoo represents Arthur, a pig that Kevin raised from his birth in October of 2011 and eventually slaughtered himself in 2012. The experience changed his perspective on how to run a restaurant. He had toyed with the idea of using whole animals before, but then became fully committed to using every part of the animals served at Northeast Kingdom. He says of slaughtering Arthur, “That moment set us on this roller coaster to deal with one animal at a time. Every week we get one pig, and we have to figure out how to use that pig because there is another one coming next Thursday.” Reflective of a less introspective side (and his love of rabbit), Kevin also has a tattoo of the Holy Hand Grenade from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a time-honored tool for killing voracious rabbits. He says, “That movie will always make me laugh.”
NOTES FROM THE CHEF
Seafood sellers use a range of numbers to describe the size of a the scallops based on how many it would take to equal a full pound. “U12" is less than 12 scallops to weigh a pound.