Shea Gallante

Expert Interview: Shea Gallante

Behind the Chef

What were your favorite foods growing up?
Pizza

When did you decide you wanted to be a chef?
When I realized that I was very good at it and that I could craft a legitimate career from it.

Where and when did your career in food begin?
When I needed money as a teenager, I started to work in pizzerias.

If you didn't become a chef, what would you be?
I would have loved to have gone to design school, like as in cars & motorcycles.

Who/what has shaped your cooking the most over the years?
David Bouley

What are your favorite culinary weapons in the kitchen?
The finest seasonal ingredients and continual tasting. Memory too, it is very powerful.

What influences your cooking style and particularly the menu at CRU?
The seasons, the product, the mood.

What is your favorite secret ingredient?
I like to add a touch of mustard oil to things. It changes though, there is always something new.

What is the one rule or value you try to instill in all of your staff?
Sorry, 3 things; Discipline, respect and consistency.

If I'm trying to watch my weight and I'm eating at your restaurant, what am I ordering to eat?
Crudo followed by the Dover Sole and finishing with a Sorbet Selection.

What was the most challenging meal you had to make? Why?
A dinner for 35 ppl in ATL with Lidia Bastianich. The guy had a 50 year old electric stove and nothing would fit in the oven, it was so small. We could only prepare 1 course at a time and there was risotto on the menu.

What was your worst restaurant disaster?
I overcooked the entrees for a VIP party of 25 People!! I had to recook the whole course and made people sit and wait 45 min for my mistake. I didn't sleep for a week.

What is your least favorite food?
Poorly cooked food.

What is your beverage of choice?
Burgundy

What are some recent dining and culinary trends you have been observing?
Conservation cooking. We are ALL feeling this. Make more with less. Utilizing the skills that I have spent so much time honing.

When you are not eating at your own restaurant...you are eating at?
Sushi. Pure, clean, simple. Seems like you can never get tired of the flavors.

Which foreign country inspires your style most?
Italy. Product driven and simple.

What was the most spectacular meal you have ever had?
A dinner on the Amalfi Coast while on my honeymoon. It was funny, because of my last name they thought that I was "connected" through family in Naples. Maybe?

What is your best cooking tip for a home enthusiast?
Keep it simple. Even I fall victim of trying to do too much. Cook within your means and do that much as best as you can!

What do you eat when you are home?
Very Simple. I do a lot of grilling, all year long. There is not a lot of time with 3 children, so I do cheat a bit and do Mise en Place at CRU . :-)

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Expert Profile

As Executive Chef and Partner of CRU restaurant on lower 5th Avenue in Manhattan, Shea Gallante takes a serious and studied approach to his profession -- striving to create precise dishes that both indulge the palate and excite the imagination.

A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and student of renowned Chefs Lidia Bastianich and David Bouley (for whom he worked for four years -- three of them as Bouley's Chef de Cuisine at Bouley restaurant), Gallante earned the attention and admiration of Roy Welland, who selected him in 2004 as the ideal chef for his soon-to-open CRU restaurant. As a result, CRU restaurant opened to immediate acclaim -- earning three stars from The New York Times and one Michelin star every year since the prestigious guide first arrived in New York in 2006. In addition, Gallante was named one of Food & Wine magazine's Best New Chefs in 2005 and Bon Appetit named CRU one of its 50 Hot Restaurants the same year.

With such acclaim, it would be easy to assume that Gallante grew up in a food-focused family that regularly dined at multi-starred restaurants. Quite the contrary. A native of Poughkeepsie, NY, Gallante began cooking almost by accident. At age 14, he worked at a local pizzeria where he discovered a natural affinity for working with food. This led to the kitchen at a family-owned trattoria, during which time a friend who was going to cooking school showed him some tricks for how to make even better dishes. Inspired by this knowledge -- and recognizing that the alternative path of using his AOS degree to become an accountant didn't excite him -- Gallante entered the culinary world. At 19, he opened his own pizzeria and a year later enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America -- a move that set the stage for a career in New York City's top restaurants.

Today, Gallante still draws from his humble beginnings, incorporating his Italian heritage into handmade pastas, such as Pappardelle with black truffle pesto, pecorino and walnut butter. However, it is dishes such as Japanese Fluke Crudo with pickled cucumber, shiso blossoms and sea urchin sauce and Terrine of Foie Gras with red-wine quince, onion and black radish that reflect how far he's come from the local pizzeria in Poughkeepsie.

Gallante's serious and studied approach doesn't stop at the kitchen doors; he applies his precision to dismantling and rebuilding motorcycles, including a Harley-Davidson V-Rod with Porsche engine. And while his professional life bears no resemblance to his childhood experiences, his personal life finds him making bologna sandwiches for his 3-year-old son, remodeling his home and helping his wife with their just-born twins.