Toque of the Town

An interview with Sam Levenfeld ’06

If it were not for advice from his mom, and some egg drop soup, none of this might have happened to Sam Levenfeld.

Sam was midway through his sophomore year at Indiana University. It was time to declare a major, but he had come home feeling adrift and uninspired. “My Mom and I were spitballing and she said, ‘You’ve always liked to have people over, cook, entertain, so how about culinary school?’”

Hmmm, thought Sam, plenty of people like to cook and entertain, so culinary school seems like a stretch, but some of Sam’s friends from Schechter, Gabi Remz ‘06, Ben Chartock ‘06 and Joel Newberger ‘06 had recently come over to hang out, and he had made them egg soup which they had loved (and still famously talk about as “that time you made us the delicious egg drop soup”).

These days, the only difference—and a remarkable, storybook one it is—is that when Sam’s friends stop by to eat, and they still do, they are walking through the doors of K’far, Laser Wolf or Jaffa Cocktail & Raw Bar, three of the trendiest, hotter-than-hot, line-outthe-door restaurants in New York City where Sam is the now Head Chef. His meteoric rise in the restaurant industry all the way to this trendy trio in Brooklyn can be attributed to his unfailing eagerness to learn, a willingness to start from scratch and, of course, the fortuitous conversation with his mother.

“We went down to Rhode Island to check out Johnson & Wales,” Sam recalls. “I didn’t know anything about it, but it looked pretty cool. I had lost interest at Indiana, and there was something in me that was not going to let that happen again. From the beginning, culinary school just gave me the structure I needed. I fell in love with the regimen as much as the cooking. Even after all these years, there is just so much I adore about being in the kitchen.”

Mornings began at 7 a.m. sharp with a crisply ironed chef coat and a clean shave. “One teacher would run a credit card up our faces to test for stubble,” chuckles Sam as he relates the rigor and the quirks of the daily drill. His lack of experience proved to be an unexpected benefit because his approach was one of complete humility and no preacquired bad habits.

“I was totally honest about having to learn everything from how to hold the knife to tons of terminology. It lit a fire under me.” Sam recognized that consistent practice would yield tangible results quickly. “Practicals” entailed making a number of dishes that would be rated by the teacher. Broken sauces and the proverbial fallen soufflés were the impetus to stick with the repetition. Soon enough, Sam was in a groove and making consistent progress, ultimately graduating magna cum laude with a B.A. in Food Service Management.

Being a chef involves more than cooking, explains Sam. “I was really interested in the accounting classes. It’s funny because you typically spend eight to 10 years on the line cooking, just trying to get better before being promoted. Then one day, someone says, ‘OK, you’re ready for management,’ but if you have only ever worked the pasta station, you have no idea how to deal with staffing, missing deliveries, ordering and budgeting. Johnson & Wales gave me a well-rounded understanding of the restaurant industry.”

By junior year, Sam was working at a small company, Fireworks Catering. Under the tutelage of a seasoned chef and amidst preparing hundreds of gourmet sandwiches, Sam relished his first paid job. Next, he moved to Red Stripe, a modern French brasserie. He was immediately smitten by working in an open kitchen which has remained his preference to this day. “It’s completely different,” he points out, “because you can see into the dining room and watch people enjoying the food that you’re cooking. The diners can also observe you, so nothing is hidden. It helps you develop really good habits and self-awareness.”

Despite being hooked by the frenetic pressure of serving 400 people on a weekend night, fixing mistakes in real time and acclimating to the non-stop rhythm of a busy kitchen, Sam’s next stop in Providence was at Metacom Kitchen, a three-staff restaurant owned by a single chef.

“There was an emphasis on ingredients and molecular gastronomy, so I was making fluid gels and using a freeze-dryer which was completely new to me. The chef was incredibly talented, and he took me under his wing. I had time to think about what I was making, and not just how we would serve 400 people. The chaos of Red Stripe and the balance of Metacom taught me about different parts of the kitchen.” Sam notes that many restaurants have a narrow template to follow because guests have expectations about the cuisine and menu, but the intimacy of Metacom afforded him the opportunity to propose menu items and to experiment.

After nearly six years in Providence, Sam yearned for a more expansive restaurant scene, so he accepted a trial at a worldrenowned, 3-star Michelin restaurant in Chicago. “You work a shift or two, so the chef can see how you move in the kitchen, your knife technique, how you get along with other people.” He snagged a plum spot on the kitchen line-up staff, but instead of feeling that he had reached the “pinnacle of everything,” Sam lasted two months in the withering, dog-eat-dog environment.

“I had heard rumors about this restaurant being abusive, but it was worse than I expected,” he remembers. “People would scream directly in your face, tell you you’re not good enough. If you turn around, someone would take your apron or steal your knives or your cutting board. No one was working together. The people who had been there longer and were higher up, looked worn out. I wanted to be a great chef, but not like that.”

A mere three weeks later, Sam landed at Momotaro, a Japanese restaurant in Chicago which is part of the Boka Restaurant Group, one of the most successful such groups in the United States, and for which Sam still works. Starting as a salad cook, he imagined that chopping vegetables would be, well, chopping vegetables, usually a comparable task regardless of the cuisine. Japanese techniques turned out to be completely different.

“I started all over again with new terms, even just the way to use my knife. The environment was awesome, so I was really growing. All the cooks just pushed each other to be better. I developed a great relationship with my Sous Chef who became one of my mentors by showing me, not telling me, what to do. Every day, he greeted every person who worked at the restaurant by name, and made them feel important. He was always measured. I knew that was what I wanted to be like. I followed him across the street to open another restaurant in the group, Cira, where I started at the bottom again as a salad cook and eventually worked my way up to Sous Chef.”

As Sous Chef, Sam was steeped in management and financials from Excel spreadsheets to coding invoices and calculating food costs, staffing and scheduling. “For example,” Sam says, “if you get a delivery with meat, stuff for the bar and produce, there are formulas to determine how much to charge to food or liquor costs. Where can you spend less? How many people do you need per shift? It tied back to what I had learned at Johnson & Wales, and then the head chef went on vacation for three weeks and I was in charge of everything. It taught me that I was ready to put it all together.”

Sam knew he had made it to the next tier of the restaurant world, but he had another plan in mind: cooking in a zero-pressure falafel shack on the beach in Tel Aviv for six months, maybe longer, just to be in Israel.

“My Executive Chef at Cira put me in touch with the well-known Israeli chef, Michael Solomonov, who I work for now. He had some suggestions for me, then the second wave of COVID-19 hit, and Israel shut its borders.” The Israel dream had been shattered yet, conversely, this was the moment “things got really good,” Sam recounts. “Chef Mike asked if I wanted to move to Brooklyn to work at Laser Wolf, a restaurant he was opening. Not exactly the beach in Tel Aviv, but it felt right to me.”

From the moment Laser Wolf opened its doors for dinner atop the Hoxton Hotel, it was a hit. The Israeli-style shipudiya or skewer house boasted an open grill in the center of the restaurant, big-hearted hospitality, a panoramic view of the East River and an unusual prix fixe starting with perfectly executed, unlimited salatim. Sam recalls the surprise at being reviewed by the New York Times only three months after opening—unheard of!—but the team had earned the accolades.

Just a few months in, Sam was promoted to Executive Sous Chef which primed him for his next role as Head Chef at sister restaurant

K’far, the new lobby-level all-day café in the Hoxton. Just several floors down from Laser Wolf, he took on the stress of ironing out start-up logistics.

Sam explains that designing a menu means preparing and tasting everything first. “You have to teach the cooks how to make everything because they're the ones who actually cook it, night in and night out, for the guests. I was doing all of that, but I was never really on the line or the grill station making food and I missed it. Once things were running smoothly, the most important thing to me was to get back there with the cooks. Giving them pointers, helping them when it’s busy, giving them time to taste and develop new skills is so much better than crossing your arms and saying, ‘Do this, do that.’ How much more does it mean to someone if you actually show them how to do it?”

Then came the third establishment at the Hoxton, Jaffa Cocktail & Raw Bar, the “rulebreaking, anything goes” cousin to kosherstyle Laser Wolf and K’far. In under two years, Sam had skyrocketed from Sous Chef at Laser Wolf to Head Chef at K’far and Jaffa under the Director of Operations. “There are so many days that ‘imposter syndrome’ can eat you up. I’ve had a lot of support and guidance, but there are days I just have to figure it out.”

Sam often thinks about the role Schechter has played in his life and career. “My education was so solid. I learned to write and speak well and, as a chef, you think critically all the time. I use my Hebrew and educate people about Israeli and Jewish cuisine. It’s not just putting chickpeas on a plate and calling it Israeli. Growing up, I thought our Ashkenazi chicken soup and matzoh balls were Jewish cooking, but it’s a melting pot. We’re telling a story by spinning the menu with influences from Yemen, Iraq, North Africa. There’s no shame in doing a traditional recipe well, and I don’t want to be so innovative that the food is unrecognizable. It’s actually the best compliment when people say something tastes just like grandma made it. You can connect with people through food on a very deep level.”

Sam offers a frank assessment of his time at numerous restaurants. “To the core, Schechter also taught me how to treat people. I’ve seen people be abused, I've been abused, and I just won't let that happen to anyone else. Since I've been in charge, I haven’t yelled or raised my voice once. There are appropriate ways to discipline people by pulling them aside for a real conversation so you're not embarrassing them. Everyone deserves dignity. If you ask someone to take out the trash, you’d better do it, too. There are so many immigrants and marginalized people in this industry. Knowing people from different backgrounds is the best part of the job.” sam is unpretentious when he says, “I’m not here by accident. There are hard days, but it feels good.” He loves it all: the view from the swanky Brooklyn rooftop, the electric synchronicity of good teams, the high-level strategy. From the beginning, Sam has not only been open to an uphill learning curve, but has been energized by it. He has embraced the step-by-step methodical process of getting better at his craft, just patiently and simply getting better, day after day, year after year. aN iN tervie W W ith:

After all this time, Sam espouses the same awe and appreciation for being the Head Chef at three ultra-celebrated restaurants as he did when he was starting at the bottom, more than once, learning to do his best fine julienne in the back kitchen.