For most 16-year-old boys, a part-time restaurant job consists of flipping beef patties, running foods to hungry tables, and plunging elbow-deep in dirty dish water. Not so, with Flynn McGarry. The culinary prodigy who graced the cover of The New York Times Magazine for his precocious cooking prowess, is opening his own restaurant in New York, where he’ll churn out a 14-course meal.
For three nights a week beginning this month, McGarry will helm a dinner party for a dozen guests in one of the most competitive and gastronomically elite cities in the world, to the wonder and bemusement of New York socialite foodies -- and the envy of aspiring chefs three times his age.
After stints apprenticing in some of the world’s most acclaimed kitchen restaurants including the triple-Michelin-starred Eleven Madison Park in New York, Alinea and Next in Chicago, and most recently Geranium in Copenhagen, McGarry will show off his 16-year-old cooking chops at Eureka NYC, an extension of the Eureka supper club he began hosting in his mother’s dining room at the age of 12.
On the menu: seawater-brined sea urchin with carrot cremeux and coffee-pickled carrots, as well as his haute riff on the after-school snack of choice for kids, peanut butter and Ritz cracker sandwiches.
Only instead of using the store-bought variety, the culinary whiz kid will be baking his own crackers, and topping it with foie gras terrine and sour cherry compote, he told Food & Wine magazine.
In addition to being featured on the cover of The New York Times Magazine’s food and drink issue last year, McGarry became the youngest honoree on Zagat’s under-30 Los Angeles list for his Eureka supper club and was named one of the top 25 most influential teens for Time magazine.
The 14-course Eureka NYC menu is priced at $160 a person, with the option of a wine pairing for an additional $80.
McGarry’s culinary residency will be hosted at catering and event space Creative Edge in the West Village, beginning September 12.
To get a better idea of the wunderkind’s cooking and food tastes, check out his Instagram feed @diningwithflynn.
More info can be found at http://www.eurekanyc.com/.
