The Culinary Life Of a Seventeen Year Old Training To Become a Chef

 

At the age of ten, Flynn McGarry wanted to cook. He began practicing his knife skills after school, and soon after started creating dishes, simple at first, for a few of his mother’s friends. At eleven, came the purchase of Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry cookbook, then Grant Achatz’s Alinea. The influence was immediate.

Flynn’s dishes became more complicated, sous vide cooking was adopted and tweezers were now a must for plating.  By twelve, the number of courses and guests had doubled at what was now called EUREKA, a supper club operating out of his mother’s home in Studio City. At thirteen, Flynn began apprenticing at Ray’s and Stark Bar at LACMA under Chef Kris Morningstar, then later went on to stage at Eleven Madison Park under Chef Daniel Humm as well as at Alinea, Next, and Modernist Cuisine in Seattle.

At the same time, Flynn and his small EUREKA staff, made up of family and professionals, were serving twenty guests a tasting menu of fourteen courses out of Flynn’s kitchen/bedroom. Flynn then became the subject of a New Yorker Talk of the Town piece, “Prodigy.” Chef John Sedlar graciously invited Flynn to serve his expanding mailing list at his restaurant for a night serving 120 guests.

At fourteen, Flynn’s supper club EUREKA relocated to pop up monthly at BierBeisl in Beverly Hills with the support of chef/owner Bernhard Mairinger. Flynn worked for a year at Alma under Chef Ari Taymor in Los Angeles and continued to pop up EUREKA in L.A, S.F and N.Y. In 2014, Flynn was the cover story of the Food and Drink Issue  of  The New York Times Magazine, became the youngest honoree on Zagat’s 30 under 30 Los Angeles list and was named one of the top 25 most influential teens from Time Magazine. His culinary experiences and the support from inspirational chefs all over the world (thanks to the internet) have enriched Flynn’s talent and ambition

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