Amanda Barnes

The Path

The early years show a cook moving through pastry, line work, and leadership without skipping the steps that make those roles hold. Amanda Barnes began as a pastry chef at St. Louis in St. Louis, where exactness and repetition would have shaped the foundation of her technique. From there, she moved into the kitchen proper as sous chef for Gerard Craft, working closer to service and to the pace that governs a professional brigade. Her first executive-chef post came at City Tavern (2013–2014), where the job expanded from execution to direction. In 2014, she became executive chef at Hot Chocolate in Chicago, a role that extended her reach and kept her within high-expectation rooms. That sequence matters: pastry, sous chef, executive chef, then another executive-chef seat. Today, Amanda is executive chef of TAO Chicago (since 2024), where the accumulated discipline of those earlier posts now sits in one position.

The Work Today

In 2024, she took over as executive chef at TAO Chicago. That kind of move puts a chef at the center of the operation after years of climbing through more limited scopes of responsibility. The role demands that timing, taste, and calm all show up at once; Amanda Barnes arrived there with a career already shaped by repeated service under pressure.

Signature

Amanda’s signature dishes point to a kitchen language built around texture, contrast, and direct flavor. Among them are salmon-skin chicharrones, wagyu-and-beef heart meatballs, Job’s tears, Salmon Skin Chicharrones, and Peking duck. Taken together, the list suggests a chef comfortable moving between crisp, rich, and savory registers without flattening them into one style.

In Their Words “I feel like that was a really seminal moment for me, because I had been in independent, hipster places before that—and this was a restaurant restaurant, like, they were super-particular about their tools and knives.”

Acclaim

The clearest recognition in this profile runs through Gerard Craft, identified as a James Beard Award winner, under whom Amanda Barnes served as sous chef. That detail places her within a kitchen lineage defined by standards, repetition, and the demands of serious service.