Reprinted from the fall 2022 issue of the St. Andrew’s Magazine. Photo by Zach Lewis.

In our second installment of If These Walls Could Talk—in which current students interview an alumnus who previously resided in their dorm room or in their dorm—seniors Danny Huang ’22 and Hunter Melton ’22 interview acclaimed chef and cookbook author Gregory Gourdet ’93. Gregory’s restaurant Kann opened in Portland, Oregon in the summer of 2022, and his first cookbook, Everyone’s Table: Global Recipes for Modern Health, won a James Beard Foundation Book Award this June. You may know him from Top Chef; he was the runner-up on season 12 of that show, which aired in 2015, and has also competed on Top Chef: All Stars. 

Danny, Hunter, and Gregory all had the great privilege of living on Baum Corridor during their respective senior years at St. Andrew’s. They chatted over Zoom about their St. Andrew’s experiences and Gregory’s career in restaurants and his goals for the future. 

Danny: I’m curious what brought you to St. Andrew’s. What drew you here?

Gregory: My parents are from Haiti. They moved to America to pursue education, seek more opportunities, and start a family. So they always just wanted the best for us. We didn’t grow up in the worst neighborhood by any means, but we didn’t have the best schools. I was in Prep for Prep, which is a program that prepares young people of color for private school and boarding school. I got into St. Andrew’s, and it turned out to be the perfect school for me. 

Hunter: I’m trying to make a timeline in my head. We currently have the panel ceilings and the carpeted floor on Baum. Was that a thing when you were here? Because they don’t have it in Dead Poets Society. They have nice hardwood floors.

Gregory: I don’t think we had carpet… but that was 30 years ago. Our 30th Reunion is next summer. There’s 14 of us on a group chat 30 years later, guys. We talk to each other literally every day, and we mostly just talk smack and joke about high school. So this is what you have to look forward to: thirty years down the line, you’re still going to be talking about St. Andrew’s. 

Hunter: When you lived on Baum, were you in a triple, a double, a single?

Gregory: I was in a double, and I roomed with Nate Jenkins ’93—we roomed for three years together. We bonded early over an accident. I’d never played football in my entire life. It was the first day of full pads in football camp freshman year. Nate tackled me and I went down so hard I broke my leg. I had a full leg cast and was on crutches for weeks. Everyone called me Peg Leg Greg for the first few months of school. But we got through it, and we were very, very close friends. Those memories never fade. 

Hunter: What made the roommate relationship work, do you think?

Gregory: I don’t know…. We were an odd couple because he was from Goodland, Kansas, a super-small town—and I was from Queens. So we could not have been more different, but we just bonded. We ended up listening to the same music. I remember when I went to visit him in Kansas for his wedding, I saw tumbleweed for the first time. 

Hunter: Danny’s from Hong Kong and New York, and I’m from a place that’s literally called Farmville, Virginia. So we have similar differences in background.

Gregory: Yes! SAS brings us together from all over the world. 

Danny: Do you have any vivid memories of living on Baum your senior year?

Gregory: I mean… we had fun. We stayed up late. We smoked cigarettes. I don’t want to be a bad example. 

Danny: We don’t smoke cigarettes. 

Gregory: No one smokes at school? I’m confused. 

Danny: We’re good with preventing [the use of] alcohol and drugs—we hold each other accountable. The seniors set an example. 

Gregory: I love it! That’s really great. Everyone’s healthier. What’s school been like for you two? Have you enjoyed your time there?

Hunter: Yeah. I feel like the main thing about St. Andrew’s is that you get to work really hard at things you actually like to do. You find out your interests and you get really good at them. 

Gregory: Honestly, when I left St. Andrew’s, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I thought I wanted to go to medical school—my parents worked in hospitals and it was just a classic immigrant story: “Hey, go be a doctor.” So I went to NYU and entered a pre-med program. But that was not what I wanted to do. It took me a few years, but eventually I discovered what I was supposed to do. So no pressure to figure it out right away, boys. Unless you think you have. Then that’s good. 

Danny: You ultimately majored in French, right?

Gregory: I did pre-med at NYU for one year, and then I decided I didn’t want to be in the city, and I thank St. Andrew’s for that. One of my biggest takeaways from St. Andrew’s, honestly, is my appreciation for nature and the desire to live somewhere that’s kind of rural and quiet and green. I love to be in the woods for hours and hours. I love to hike. I love visiting New York, but I’m so much happier in Portland, because it’s super-green here. 

[After my first year of college] I moved out to Montana with five of my friends from St. Andrew’s. We all went to different schools for college, and we missed each other so much that we all decided to live together for the summer, which was pure debauchery. But I ended up staying out there for school. I thought I wanted to do wildlife biology, and it was while I was in those classes that I started cooking for myself and feeding myself for the first time. You don’t do that at St. Andrew’s, and I lived at home in Queens during my freshman year at NYU. That was when I decided that this culinary stuff was something I was interested in. I mean, this was pre-TV cooking shows—cooking wasn’t as glamorized or popular or even as known. I didn’t even know what culinary school was at the time. But once I realized that was a thing you could do, I tried to graduate from Montana as quickly as possible, and I had a bunch of French credits. Then finally I went to the Culinary Institute of America. I was basically in college for seven years, with culinary school at the end of it. It all worked out. 

Danny: Were your parents supportive of you, when you decided to go into cooking? 

Gregory: My parents were extremely supportive… I literally put them through hell. I got suspended from St. Andrew’s sophomore year for a bunch of stuff that we did off campus. It was a big mess. Then I kept changing schools. They didn’t know what to do with me. They were like, “Just please graduate from something.” But they were always, always supportive. I appreciate that because it took me quite a few years to figure out who I was, and now I get to pay them back by being the person that I am and by being a better son. 

Hunter: You’ve reached an extraordinarily high level in what you love to do, and you are reaching higher still. What’s motivated you between now and when you first started out, that’s helped you bridge the gap between those two moments?

Gregory: One, I’m extremely goal-driven, and I’m very results driven as well. I think it’s important that you never compare yourself to other people, but I also think it’s extremely important to set goals for yourself. And I always do. I’m a workaholic—I’m pretty open about being in recovery, and I definitely have an addictive personality. I know I’ve replaced a lot of my behavior patterns with working. 

Two, my early mentors were all extremely successful people. My first chef, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, had twenty restaurants and Michelin stars and four stars from The New York Times when I was a young cook working for him. There was always a high level of excellence that I was exposed to and just always believed in. I do have an outgoing personality, and I tend to latch onto my mentors—“Hey, you have to teach me all this stuff, and I have all these questions.” It can be harder if you’re not the loudest person in the room, and you have to fight for attention. Greg Brainin is Jean-George’s main recipe developer, his right-hand man—he’s really my mentor. We were just texting today. 

Trying to get the most out of life is something I’m extremely passionate about. I always love to learn more. I love what I do so much that it keeps me up at night. And when I started cooking twenty-something years ago, I never really knew how many fields I could tap into as a chef. I never really thought I could be on cooking shows, and be teaching people how to cook, and working with the Salmon Commission and the Dungeness Crab Commission, and working with farmers to grow certain things, and helping young cooks achieve their goals and dreams. There’s so many facets of life I get to touch on. That’s the most exciting thing for me, and it keeps me extremely busy. 

Hunter: Can you talk a little bit about your cookbook? Its subtitle is “Global Recipes for Modern Health”—what do you think are the most important steps we can take toward being healthier and more sustainable in our cooking and food consumption?

Gregory: The number one thing we need to think about is that food is there for nourishment. If we can think of food as a way to source vitamins and minerals and antioxidants and all the things we need to feel good and go about our day and our lives, I think that can really help inform and inspire the way that we eat. 

For me, as someone who battered my body for many, many years, I’m a total health freak now. I eat food to fuel myself, because I work a lot, and sometimes I don’t sleep a lot. I just want to feel good, and food helps me feel good. Of course, there are the treats, the celebratory things, and so many great dishes that maybe aren’t that healthy for you, but our families make them, and it’s more about being together. Food is something that helps bring us together and be convivial and jovial and familial. So, you have to find a balance there. 

In my cookbook, I try to show that there are all these amazing foods and ingredients and recipes from all over the world that are healthful, easy to make, and delicious. With a little bit of effort, and focusing on buying the right things—lots of vegetables, well-sourced meats and fish—we can all live longer lives.  

Danny: Take me back to Jean-Georges. How do you pronounce that last name—it’s not French, is it?

Gregory: It is. He’s from Alsace, so it’s, like, French-German. It’s Von-grr-riche-tin. 

Danny: I take French here, so I was wondering how you pronounced that. I started this club called Crepes and Conversation, where we make crepes and talk in French—

Hunter: I was not invited because I don’t speak French. But I love crepes. 

Danny: Open to French students only, unfortunately. 

Hunter: I mostly just sneak into faculty houses and cook, because I really like to eat. 

Gregory: You guys cook at school? What do you like to cook?

Hunter: Sometimes you can get a teacher to let you into their kitchen. From prom, I got to make some shrimp curry. 

Danny: I make a really mean medium rare steak. And I’m also a professional instant ramen chef. 

Gregory: Oh yeah. As is anyone who goes to boarding school. 

Danny: What are some of the most important lessons you took away from cooking under Jean-Georges?

Gregory: One, it’s important to believe in yourself. Two, ask for the things that you want. And three, if you don’t get the things that you want, just really try to understand and ask what it’s going to take to get you to the next level, and work on that. 

Even though I had a lot of ups and downs—I worked there at the height of my addiction issues—I was still able to rise up through the ranks. I think one of the most important components of success in a kitchen is always showing up on time, if not a few minutes early, and working clean. Jean-Georges always said that cleaning is 50% of cooking. 

If you truly put in the work, the opportunities will come. Sometimes things don’t happen quickly, but if you’re consistent and you show up and you ask questions, I do not believe there is a glass ceiling.

Danny: How would you say the kitchen atmosphere differs from atmospheres in other workplaces? It seems like it’s more… high-stakes. 

Gregory: Historically, kitchens have been lawless spaces—the chef is drunk, he’s throwing pots and pans, and there’s no system of checks and balances. It’s gone on for quite some time. I am grateful that I didn’t have any of those experiences when I was coming up. Sometimes fine dining gets a bad rap, but I had a really wonderful experience when I worked for Jean-Georges. He’s super-chill, and I always felt supported and nurtured, even as someone coming up the ranks as a gay person of color in a very, very white space. I’m lucky. I know plenty of people just like me who have tried to succeed in these spaces, and have not been given the same opportunities.

There has very much so been a history of sexism within these spaces. Women have traditionally been unfairly treated in kitchens, and unfairly paid. There’s been abuse of employees—the expectation that you will work off the clock, for example. I think over the past five to seven years, there’s been a reckoning brewing for restaurants, and a lot of that came to a head when the world shut down. Now in restaurants and kitchens we’re talking about work-life balance and equity and mental health.

Hunter: Would you say your perspective of the kitchen changed when you were no longer working under someone, but instead, you are now at the top?

Gregory: I mean, I’ve pretty much been working for someone for my entire career, until right now. Even in my last job, I worked as the executive chef at a hotel restaurant here in Portland, and I was there for ten years. I had a lot of free range and a lot of trust with the company. But I got to the point where I decided I wanted to do my own thing, and now I’m in the driver’s seat. It’s exciting and a little scary as well. 

Hunter: What is your new restaurant going to be like, if you could describe the personality of it?

Gregory: Kann is a wood-fired Haitian restaurant. It is inspired by my Hatiian heritage and will honor the traditional recipes and ingredients and dishes of Haiti, but also honor Oregon bounty and seasonal ingredients from our farmlands, oceans, and mountains. There will be some Pan-Caribbean influences as well. When people leave the restaurant, I want them to have a clear understanding of at least a handful of traditional Haitian dishes. I want to elevate Haitian cuisine and the story that surrounds Haiti, because Haiti gets a lot of bad press, and it’s a country that has struggled quite a bit in past decades. But all my memories of living in Haiti when I was kid, or visiting there with my family when I was older, all my memories of my family in Queens—they’re all just beautiful memories with a lot of food, my mom cooking, huge lavish feasts every Sunday. Haiti was the first country to abolish slavery and also the world’s first black republic. Haitian history is so rich. These are the stories I want to tell. 

One of the coolest parts of being able to tap into my family’s culture with this restaurant is working with my parents on so many things. I’ve done pop-up dinners in Portland with my mom. I write a lot of things on my menus in Hatian Creole, and I always call my dad to ask him if the spelling is proper. It’s a pretty cool thing to have their help and their knowledge. 

But to have a great restaurant and a great business is more than just making great food or being financially successful. It’s really about the holistic being of the entire system. Are the employees happy? Is there work-life balance? Is the restaurant sustainable in terms of how it impacts the environment? Are we supporting small farms and tapping into our local resources? Are we sharing the story of the culture that’s behind the food properly? Am I sure that everyone on the team understands that I want them to advance? I don’t want them to stay in their position forever, unless that’s what they want. It is so important to me that at Kann, we have equity. We are splitting tips equally amongst all the employees. We have women in all positions of kitchen leadership. I’m actively seeking a diverse team. 

I mentioned earlier about how it is easier to succeed in restaurants if you’re the loudest person in the room. But that really shouldn’t be the system. Everyone should have an equal opportunity to get to the top, even if you’re the person who just works quietly in the corner. So I want to have plenty of conversations at Kann about making sure people understand that they can succeed. That’s how you create equity in a workspace.