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Food and Wine announced its 2017 list of Best New Chefs Monday, and it includes three Los Angeles chefs. Jordan Kahn of Destroyer and Sara Kramer and Sarah Hymanson of Kismet represent L.A. alongside nine other chefs from around the country.
Jordan Kahn opened Destroyer in 2016, and Kramer and Hymanson opened Kismet in January of this year. None of these chefs are novices in the field, but Food and Wine considers "new chefs" as anyone who has headed a kitchen for fewer than five years. Kahn's controversial Red Medicine closed in 2014 after four years, and Kramer and Hymanson have owned Madcapra in Grand Central Market since 2015. (Kramer was also executive chef at Glasserie in Brooklyn for nine months before moving to the West Coast).
All three of these chefs represent the intersection of flavor, ingenuity, aesthetics, and a commitment to breakfast food so prevalent in Los Angeles dining. Destroyer occupies the arena of minimalist, high-concept dining. The food is incredible and the experience is at times antagonistic: little to no parking, no desire to pander to diners, and an expectation to always bow to Kahn's culinary whims. All this aimed at a lunchtime crowd in Culver City. Kismet, meanwhile, occupies the family-style, convivial, and flavorful world where community and good food are synonymous. What each of them does is wholly unique, which makes them apt representatives for contemporary food in Los Angeles.
Food and Wine describes Kahn's cooking as "vivid and wild, strange and fantastic," elaborating that he "holds the line for a style of cooking and auteurship that is often locked up inside extravagant, international tasting menus." The magazine describes Kramer and Hymanson's work as "exciting, progressive, deeply Californian….and, of course, wildly delicious."
The Best New Chefs list has previously honored L.A. chefs like Kris Yenbamroong of Night + Market, Ori Menashe of Bestia, Ari Taymor of Alma, Michael Voltaggio of Ink, and Bryant Ng of Cassia, according to the LA Times.
The chefs will be honored in NYC on Tuesday before appearing in the July issue of the magazine.
