A chef can spend a decade in a city kitchen without a diner ever learning their name. The hours run past midnight, the line never slows and credit for the plate almost always goes to someone else; it’s a career built on proximity to fame that rarely delivers any of it. A handful of highly credentialed chefs, with Michelin stars, James Beard nods and years in kitchens most people will never get a reservation at, are making an unusual move: leaving major culinary markets for smaller cities and towns, where they can build restaurants under their own names.
What connects the chefs making this move isn’t geography. Some are returning to towns they grew up near. Others are landing somewhere they’ve never lived before, in some cases outside the country entirely. What they share is a decision to trade anonymity in a crowded market for a name that means something in a smaller one. A chef who spent years perfecting plates in Manhattan or Napa Valley can walk into a town of a few thousand people and become, almost overnight, the reason people drive an hour for dinner.
The staffing numbers tell part of the story
Restaurant work has never been kind to a personal life. Chefs routinely work nights, weekends and holidays while everyone else is home, and the industry has long treated that sacrifice as simply the cost of the job.
Restaurant staffing has recovered unevenly from the pandemic: as of summer 2026, full-service restaurant employment was still 183,000 jobs below its pre-pandemic level, and staffing in 16 states and the District of Columbia remained below pre-pandemic levels. For a few chefs, walking away from that and reclaiming time with their families is turning out to be as much of a draw as the credential waiting for them somewhere smaller.
Greenville, South Carolina
Nico Abello held a Michelin star for six consecutive years at L’Appart in Manhattan, the kind of credential that keeps a chef’s phone ringing in any major market. In 2022, he and his family relocated to the Upstate of South Carolina instead. This September, Greenville will finally get his long-anticipated restaurant, Enlō, a tasting menu that changes monthly, with seasonal ingredients and wine pairings drawn from lesser-known family vineyards.
“After Covid and the long stretch of ‘back to normal,’ I made the decision to move to a smaller city for the kids,” Abello said. “I wanted a different kind of life for them, and a different professional rhythm for myself. I imagined that living here would naturally be slower and less stressful. But after a few years, I’ve realized something important: the pace of life isn’t set by the size of the city — it’s set by me.” What’s changed, he said, is what he’s able to give his kids: space to grow, a home that feels expansive and a childhood filled with outdoor activities and freedom. “That’s the real difference,” Abello said.
Door County, Wisconsin
Carlos Salgado spent a decade in San Francisco and Oakland kitchens, including Vernon Morales’ Winterland, Daniel Patterson’s Coi and James Syhabout’s Commis, before opening Taco María in Costa Mesa, California, in 2013. When the Michelin Guide returned to California in 2019, Taco María was the only Mexican restaurant to receive a star, a distinction it held through 2023. The Los Angeles Times named it Restaurant of the Year in 2018, and Salgado was a James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef: California from 2016 to 2023, then a finalist in 2023.
After a decade in Costa Mesa, Salgado and his wife, Emilie Coulson Salgado, closed Taco María and moved to Coulson’s hometown region of Door County, Wisconsin, in 2023. In September 2025, the two opened La Sirena, an upscale Mexican American restaurant, in Ephraim.
Charlotte, North Carolina
Callan Buckles came up through New York kitchens including Momofuku and The Four Horsemen before a stint at Charter Oak in Napa Valley, then returned to New York as chef de cuisine at Claud, a French-American restaurant recognized in The New York Times’ 100 Best restaurants and the city’s Michelin guide.
In January 2025, he opened Rada in Charlotte, which was named to The New York Times’ 2025 Restaurant List and received a Michelin Recommended nod in November 2025. Buckles is part of a wider pattern of chefs with major-market pedigree choosing smaller Southern cities to open on their own terms, rather than staying in the markets that trained them.
Lubbock, Texas
Finn Walter, a 2026 James Beard Finalist and 2022 semifinalist for Best Chef: Texas, spent nearly 20 years working in San Francisco, Paris, Napa Valley, Austin, Santa Fe and New Orleans, including a stint at the three-Michelin-starred Restaurant at Meadowood in Napa Valley. A native of Lubbock, he always intended to return home to share his version of West Texas cuisine with the community. In 2020, he opened The Nicolett, named for the first hotel in the region, built around High Plains cuisine that blends West Texas ingredients with techniques he picked up along the way.
Elora, Ontario
The pattern holds outside the U.S., too, and nowhere more visibly than in Elora, a small Ontario town about 90 minutes from Toronto. Chef Miles Pundsack-Poe was raised just minutes from town, training at Stratford Chefs School before a career that ran through Langdon Hall, Napa Valley’s three-Michelin-starred Restaurant at Meadowood and Etxebarri and Echaurren in Spain.
On Aug. 1, Pundsack-Poe opened Foxy’s, a Spanish tapas concept inside Elora’s historic Ayrshire Hotel, bringing that career back to the region where he grew up. “I left the pace of the city for the rhythm of the seasons,” Pundsack-Poe said. “Here, surrounded by farms, forests and local producers, every ingredient and harvest has a story, and the plates feel more personal.”
He’s not the only one. Chef Tony Bish, a Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef who cooked in Hong Kong, Bangkok, Phuket and New York, opened Tony’s Sourdough Pizzeria in Elora’s historic Elora Mews in June 2025, building his pies around a sourdough starter passed down from his grandmother. His own biography credits a World’s 50 Best pizza award for a concept he ran in Asia. And at the Kat Florence Hotel, Chef Marc Collyer, formerly of the twice Michelin-starred Manor House in the British Cotswolds, now leads the hotel’s Infinity Patisserie, a daily-changing collection of pastries for guests.
National Geographic once featured Elora in a small-town escape guide that carried painter A.J. Casson’s description of the village as “Ontario’s most beautiful village.” It’s now collecting chefs with the same kind of resume.
None of them coordinated
A handful of chefs did not plan this together. They don’t share a PR firm, a mentor or a market. What they share is a bet that a name built somewhere small can travel just as far as one built in a city that already has a hundred other names competing for the same table.
Jennifer Allen is a retired chef turned traveler, cookbook author and nationally syndicated journalist; she’s also a co-founder of Food Drink Life, where she shares expert travel tips, cruise insights and luxury destination guides. A recognized cruise expert with a deep passion for high-end experiences and off-the-beaten-path destinations, Jennifer explores the world with curiosity, depth and a storyteller’s perspective. Her articles are regularly featured on the Associated Press Wire, The Washington Post, Seattle Times, MSN and more.
The post Big-city kitchens can make a chef’s career. Small towns are where they’re building a name appeared first on Food Drink Life.
Commented