David Santos

Coming Up

David Santos trained at Johnson & Wales University before moving through a run of chef roles across New York’s exacting rooms. He was chef at Per Se, chef at Bouley, chef at Nicholas, and chef at The Ryland Inn, each post adding another layer to a method that depends on patience as much as precision. Those years point to a cook shaped by demanding standards, where every movement matters and every plate has to earn its place. He later served as chef at Louro in West Village (2012–2015), a period that sharpened the more restless side of his work. In that chapter, the menu language tied itself to ripe ingredients and change, a way of cooking that responds to what the season is offering rather than forcing a familiar answer. Today David is chef of Foxface Natural, where those earlier experiences are gathered rather than left behind.

Where They Are Now

Santos is chef of Foxface Natural in New York City, and the current chapter brings his earlier work into focus without flattening it into a fixed formula. The organization and quality he credits to Keller, the sauce work he links to Bouley, the New Jersey years, and the West Village role remain visible in the way he cooks now — not as relics, but as lived-in disciplines that still shape the plate. That resistance to a fixed signature matters in the way his career is best read. Rather than one dish standing in for the chef, the through-line is a working method: seasonality, flavor, organization, sauces, and the challenge of making something new instead of repeating a past success. It is a restless, thoughtful approach, one that treats repetition as a hazard and reinvention as part of the job. At Foxface Natural, that sensibility gives the menu a sense of movement, as if each dish is arriving with a memory of the last one, but determined not to become it.

Signature

David's signature dishes include Um Segredo.

In Their Words “I don’t believe in signature dishes because for me it’s like being handcuffed and I enjoy the challenge of creating something new.” “I have the utmost respect for Bouley’s sauce work, and my sauces are quite influenced by him today.”

Honors

The named milestones in his career are his 2001 training at Johnson & Wales University and chef roles at Per Se, Bouley, Nicholas, The Ryland Inn, Louro, and Foxface Natural.