The mastermind and master chef behind the BL Gruppo empire (which includes No. 9 Park, B&G Oysters, The Butcher Shop, Sportello, Menton, Drink and Stir), Barbara Lynch will be joining Padma, Tom and Gail on tonight’s highly anticipated Restaurant Wars episode of Top Chef Boston. Before you turn on your TV, see what she had to say about how the Gruppo cultivates such strong competitors and why Boston’s such a great host city.
Boston Chefs: You’ve sent two really talented young women to Top Chef – Kristen, who won it all, and Stephanie, who could have gone a lot further. What skills do you teach in your kitchens that cultivate good Top Chef competitors?
Barbara Lynch: Time management, sense of urgency and cleanliness, teamwork, leadership, passion, and, of course, a refinement of technique. Our company culture is based upon education and so the spirit of constantly tasting, studying, researching, and refining ripples through the kitchen. Stir is particularly interesting since both Kristen[Kish] and Steph [Cmar] came from there; it’s a tiny demonstration kitchen where they are essentially “on stage” every night cooking for 10 guests with a different menu. They become very comfortable cooking in front of people and having to constantly create new menus so perhaps that helped a bit.
BC: If you were designing a Top Chef Boston challenge what would it be?
Lynch: I would love to see a challenge that tests the contestants’ knowledge of the fundamentals. It would be in the same vein as the knife speed challenge, but with technique!
BC: If Top Chef had been around when you were starting your career would you have done it?
Lynch: This is a tricky question. Even though I know that reality TV can open up great opportunities for young chefs by exposing them to a broader audience, I would have had to weigh it up against where my career was at that exact point in time. Timing would have been everything.
BC: So you’ve got pretty deep roots in Boston. What does it mean to you to have this award winning show come here? What makes Boston a great host city?
Lynch: First of all, what makes Boston a great city for Top Chef is the camaraderie that exists between chefs who find it more important to support each other than to compete with each other, we really want the contestants to succeed. Our dining scene has evolved greatly over the past 25 years and continues to get better and better. It’s an exciting time to be here and I think Top Chef realized that.
Boston might be a small city but it has such a big personality…we have our own way of talking and driving…there is fierce pride, a huge respect for the city’s history, and a shared dedication to the spirit of innovation. What more could you want in a city?
BC:It’s been just about a year since the Time Gods of Food article created such a stir by not including any female chefs. We seem to have plenty of really talented women running the show in town. Is Boston an especially female chef-friendly city?
Lynch: It’s true, we’ve had a number of brilliant female chefs running kitchens here for some years and I’ve been asked before what makes Boston different. I don’t think of it as necessarily more female chef-friendly but I do think that the restaurant community in this town is incredibly supportive and nurturing and I think that makes a difference. We share knowledge and talent; we support each other and push each other to be better.
