Wink & Nod’s next executive chef will be remembering home with new menu
Wink & Nod, a culinary incubator in Boston’s South End, has chosen its next resident.
Chef Gita Kantrow will take the reins from current chef Brendan Pelley August 1 when she debuts her concept restaurant featuring Nepalese-inspired cuisine.
“The restaurant will feature contemporary Nepalese cuisine, not authentic,” she said. “I was born in Nepal, but I also grew up in the states so the spices will be familiar to Nepalese cooking, but weaved into foods I’ve been familiar with from 9-years-old on.”
Boston Nightlife Ventures oversees the incubator program, which brings in a new chef roughly every six months.
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Kantrow doesn’t have your usual culinary background.
The chef began cooking as a way to remember home after she left her family as a child and moved to the states for an opportunity to get an American education.
“My adopted parents didn’t know how to make Nepalese food and I didn’t have pallette for American food, so, not in order to survive I guess, but more to remember home, cooking was a way to not relive but visit the past and my memories at home,” Kantrow said. “To this day, I go home every other summer to stay with them.”
Kantrow graduated from Bates College with a sociology degree, but always loved cooking. She went on to cater for a year, before working as a private chef the past two years.
Because she doesn’t have much restaurant experience, Kantrow said she’ll be spending the next few months training at the incubator’s newest restaurant, Southern Kin Cookhouse, in Assembly Square and finalizing her restaurant’s menu.
“I’m super excited and nervous at the same time—but I think it’s good to be nervous,” she said.
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