September 11, 2025, marks the 10th anniversary of Chef Kerry Simon’s death.
Shortly before his death, Kerry asked me to contribute the memoir portion of a book he was hoping to publish. Because time was short, and his condition had left him unable to speak, I interviewed as many of his friends as possible, collecting stories about his life. Unfortunately, Kerry died before it could be completed.
The short stories in this series (and the introduction) are precisely what I presented to Kerry a few weeks before his death, receiving a thumbs-up and nod of approval. They have not been updated. The video trailer in these stories represents preliminary work on a documentary about the chef’s life, which I discussed with him during our final meeting. I still hope to complete that project.
Introduction
When I was told that Kerry Simon was preparing to publish his first cookbook, I was thrilled. The chef has probably served me more great meals over the years than any other, and I couldn’t wait to attempt re-creating some of them at home. When I then learned he wanted the book to double as a memoir about his life as the “Rock ‘N’ Roll Chef,” I was ecstatic. While I’ve known Kerry for over a decade, I’m constantly learning new and fascinating aspects of his unique ride through the worlds of food and fame. Then, when I was asked to help him with the latter part, I did so. I was humbled and excited.
And a little bit nervous.
The phrase “chefs are the new rock stars” became a cliché decades ago. But when Kerry was declared the Rock ‘N’ Roll Chef by Rolling Stone in 1991 (two years before the launch of The Food Network began the proliferation of celebrity chefs), he was without peers.
Kerry has helmed countless restaurants, accumulated far too many accolades and awards to document, and spearheaded several culinary trends that went on to become commonplace. An accomplished fine dining chef, he’s also been a pioneer in the field of gourmet comfort food. Soft-spoken and mild-mannered, he’s entertained and been entertained by some of the most prominent personalities in the worlds of rock, pop, TV, movies and sports.
All of this comes from a boy born in Philadelphia who spent his late teens outside of Chicago and grew up with “a bunch of hippies” who ate a lot of quinoa. In words about his childhood that he put on tape many years before his death, “Most people had not given up hope, but certainly thought my goals were not to be in a food world, if any world at all. I think they had my numbers at a low level of [surviving] my extinction.”
Kerry was introduced to the restaurant world in a very humble setting because he wanted to buy a guitar, which would remain a lifelong passion. He took a job at Little Caesars Pizza, where he worked with future superstar actor Bill Murray. He made his first real dish, chicken cacciatore, using a newspaper recipe at the age of 15 before deciding to attend culinary school. And he went on to change how people viewed dining in New York, Miami, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and around the world. And Simon Hospitality Group continues to operate restaurants in the U.S., with more planned.
No chef, past or present, has led a life like his. Clearly, a full biography of this multifaceted pioneer would overshadow the recipes in this book, which he presents with the assistance of Anne Callaghan. And for all the fame and publicity he’s received over the years, Kerry speaks best through his food. Moreover, Kerry’s battle with a disease called Multiple Systems Atrophy made it difficult for him to communicate as we were assembling this book, making it impossible to collect from him all of his great stories. But he loved hearing how his friends reminisced about all of the wild and crazy times.
So that’s how we decided to approach this book. Kerry personally selected his favorite recipes from his extensive archives. Anne organized and compiled them. I reached out to Kerry’s best and closest friends and supporters from pivotal stages in his career, asking them to share their stories.
It’s incredible how many busy and influential people got back to me almost immediately, anxious to talk about their experiences with him. Some wanted to talk about food. Others recalled the star-studded party atmospheres of his restaurants. Still others wanted to talk about their personal experiences together. I know I enjoyed hearing every story, and they all brought a smile to Kerry’s face when I shared them with him. So while this may not be a complete telling of his life story, we hope that, taken as a whole, they’ll cast some light on the unique and influential life and food of the Rock ‘N’ Roll Chef.
If I Can Make it Here: New York
After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America, Kerry went on to secure positions in several high-profile restaurants. He worked at La Côte Basque with Jean-Jaque Rachou. He worked under Andre Soltner at the legendary Lutece. He was a personal chef for astronomer John Addey. He worked with future mentor Jean-Georges Vongerichten at the Lafayette restaurant in the Drake Hotel, helping it earn a four-star rating in the New York Times. But it was in 1989, when he was hired to run the Edwardian Room at New York’s famed Plaza hotel, that he truly began to mingle with celebrity.
Donald Trump had recently purchased the landmark on Central Park South, and the decision to bring in the 35-year-old to head the kitchen was part of an attempt to return it to its former glory. He gave control over the restaurant to his wife, Ivana, who brought Kerry in to run it. And she was anxious to show him off.
“Ivana Trump invited me to either lunch or dinner,” celebrity journalist Robin Leach recalls of his first meal by Kerry in The Edwardian Room. “And it was the last place you wanted to eat in New York. Because back in those days, that was the home of bad hotels’ [attempts at] good food. And she promised me it wouldn’t be regular bad hotel food, it would, in fact, be something completely different. And it was.”
“He was serving a different kind of food than we’d ever had. It wasn’t a slab of roast beef on the plate with mashed potatoes. It was pub food. But it was elevated pub food. And in those days, we didn’t have gastropubs. We had low-end coffee shop kind of food, and then you had great restaurants.”
Leach wasn’t the only person Simon impressed at The Plaza. The restaurant quickly became a hotspot for the entertainment elite. Regulars included David Crosby, Matt Dillon, John McEnroe and members of The Rolling Stones and INXS. Kerry set up a table in the kitchen so the stars could eat in privacy. It was there that David Bowie proposed to model Iman, and Deborah Harry of Blondie celebrated her birthday dressed in lingerie.
As they dined, the celebrity customers were provided scrapbooks to leave the chef a drawing or a personal message. Kerry still kept all of these books in his home until his death, and they’re packed with drawings by everyone from photographer David LaChapelle to astronomer Carl Sagan to countless rock and pop stars, as well as Polaroid pictures of his famous friends enjoying their meals. It’s an astounding collection, documenting a unique period in New York history.
Haircuts and Jean-Georges
Over the years, when asked to name his mentors, Kerry has consistently included Jean-Georges Vongerichten on the list. The pair first worked together at The Lafayette in New York’s Drake Hotel, before Kerry’s time at The Plaza and in Miami.
“He looked like a rock star already,” Jean-Georges recalls of their interview. “He had long hair to his shoulders.” That hair in the restaurant’s open kitchen worried him about whether Kerry would be able to keep it under a hair net or a hat. So Kerry surprised him.
“He came back two days later, without even having the job yet, with a super-funky haircut,” his old boss laughs. “It was shaved on one side and was long on the other side. And I thought, ‘What is he gonna do, work facing only one direction?’” But Kerry managed to keep it under a hat, and the two began a relationship that would shape the younger chef’s career.
After spending some time on his own in New York and Florida, Kerry reunited with Jean-Georges in the mid-90s. At this point, his mentor was preparing to open sister restaurants to his popular New York venue, Vong, in London and Hong Kong. Kerry became his point person in Hong Kong. It was a welcome move for the chef, who was always passionate about traveling and exploring other cultures and cuisines, and had traveled to Russia, Europe and the Far East a few years earlier.
“What was great about Kerry was that when he traveled, he would really get the flavors of what [local] people want to eat, how they eat in their culture,” Jean-Georges explains. “So we always provided the flavors that we gave in New York, but always with a local touch.”
Kerry’s charm and people skills also provided valuable public relations. “He went to Hong Kong, and a month before we opened, he already knew 2,000 people in town. That’s the kind of person Kerry is. He connects. He goes out. He eats. And there’s no way people cannot like the guy. So we were popular before we even opened because of Kerry. All the girls knew him, and [so did] all the people who mattered in town.”
It was also while he was in Hong Kong with Jean-Georges that Kerry had his second encounter with Robin Leach, who would later become one of his biggest supporters in Las Vegas. “We were at the top of a skyscraper that went through the clouds,” Robin says of the surprise encounter. “And Kerry’s restaurant was in the very top, so you were dining in the clouds. I don’t remember the dishes I ate. But I do remember the meal. And it was pretty fantastic.”
The Rock ‘N’ Roll Chef is Born
Kerry’s success with New York’s movers and shakers didn’t go unnoticed by the media. In 1991, Rolling Stone decided to include him in their “Hot Issue.” From that point forward, Kerry would be known as The Rock ‘N’ Roll Chef.
Famed celebrity photographer Mark Seliger was assigned to shoot Kerry for the issue. His first impression of the chef? “He was so gracious and giving. He was the most generous guy. He looked like he was twelve. I was totally taken aback by the fact that here was this major guy, because this was before chefs were rock stars.”
Seliger was no stranger to meeting famous people. He was, however, unfamiliar with kitchen culture. And he was blown away by the intimate experience Kerry had created inside his kitchen for his V.I.P. guests.
“This was totally a foreign language to me,” Seliger says of his first experience with that table. “You’d go into the kitchen, and there was a table set up, and you’d have dinner in the kitchen. And you were kind of sanctified by the head chef in terms of the service and the attention. And you were just sort of allowing the head chef to be the king of the castle. You didn’t order anything. And just through his charm and magnetism, he’d just listen to what your requests were, what flavors you liked, and he invented a whole menu for you. It was a personal experience.”
Not long after the Rolling Stone shoot, Seliger shot Kerry for another magazine. And the two struck up a lifelong friendship. They snowboarded together and traveled together. And Kerry continued to introduce his friend to the perks of being a V.I.P. in the dining world – including custom menus sent by the chef or owner whenever the two would dine out together.
“We would basically go into a tasting [when we dined together],” he explains. “It was fascinating, because I had never really experienced something like that before. I had always gone as a normal human being into a restaurant. And all of a sudden, I was in the midst of these wonderful tastings. They were always trying to impress him.”
Through Kerry, Mark met Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Mario Batali. And he says his meals continued to get better. “Every time I would go to a restaurant with the three of them,” he jokes, “it was like being an ambassador with three presidents! You had the best food, the best wine and the best conversation.”
As great as those restaurant experiences were, however, some of Mark’s favorite stories involve the chef cooking outside of his restaurants. He cooked up a cinnamon fish in Cabo. There was the time they shopped for groceries together in Venice. And there was a Thanksgiving dinner Kerry helped prepare at the photographer’s New York home.
“On Thanksgiving Day, it turned frigid,” he recalls of the holiday. “It was probably ten degrees outside. And he took that turkey and sat with it and basted it and smoked it on my rooftop in a smoker from 9:00 in the morning until 6:30 when we served dinner. He was bundled up like an Eskimo. And it was, hands-down, the best turkey I’ve ever had.”
FOR MORE POSTS IN THIS SERIES, PLEASE SEE:
Remembering Kerry Simon: The Miami Years
Remembering Kerry Simon: Vegas, Baby!
