Alex Stupak

Coming Up

Technique is the throughline in Alex Stupak’s work, and the Culinary Institute of America gave that discipline its base. From there, the Empellón universe became the clearest expression of a career built on formal training, personal judgment, and a willingness to let attitude sit alongside craft. Today, Alex is chef/owner of Empellón Cocina, chef/owner of Empellón Taqueria, chef and owner of Empellón Al Pastor (since 2014), and chef-proprietor of Empellón restaurant group.

Where They Are Now

Restaurant point of view is not a side effect in Alex Stupak’s kitchens; it is the point. His own line — “I would rather be provocative and even divisive with my restaurants than a boring, catchall thing.” — makes the operating logic plain. The work is shaped to keep edges intact, not sand them down, so the rooms read as authored spaces rather than neutral containers. In that frame, the restaurants carry an argument about taste, identity, and risk, with experimentation visible in the front of house as much as in the food.

Signature

Tacos: Recipes and Provocations sits at the center of Alex Stupak’s signature work because it treats a familiar format as a technical and creative field, not a fixed category. The title captures the tension running through the practice: recognition on one side, disruption on the other. That is the method at play in his approach to a casual form, where the familiar is kept legible while the treatment pushes beyond routine.

In Their Words “My most important core emotions are creativity and rebellion, and that manifests in my restaurants.” “I would rather be provocative and even divisive with my restaurants than a boring, catchall thing.” These lines define the craft position clearly. Creativity is not used here as decoration, and rebellion is not offered as branding. For Alex Stupak, they are working tools — the energies that shape the restaurant as an authored object and give the food its pressure.

Honors

A 2015 James Beard Foundation Awards nomination placed Alex Stupak within the broader field of New York chefs working Modern Mexican cooking with a distinct point of view. The recognition followed the founding of Empellón Taqueria in 2011 and the opening of Empellón Al Pastor in 2014, both markers in a period when the work had already taken on a recognizable shape. The nomination did not change the terms of the craft; it confirmed that the training, the range, and the perspective had begun to register beyond the dining room.