Gregory Gourdet

The Climb

The Culinary Institute of America gave Gregory Gourdet a technical base that reads through the rest of his work: order, control, and repetition as tools rather than constraints. After that, the record moves through a sequence of kitchens and cities that widened his range without changing the core of the cooking. He went on to work as student at New York University in New York City, student at University of Montana in Missoula, Montana, intern at Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Head Chef at Jean-Georges Vongerichten restaurants (2000–2010), Executive Chef at Departure Restaurant and Lounge in Portland, Oregon (2010–2016), Culinary Director at Departure in Portland, Oregon and Denver, Colorado (2016–2019), finalist at Bravo's Top Chef (2015), and finalist at Bravo's Top Chef: All-Stars L.A. (2020). The throughline is clear enough: each stop added scale, pressure, and a wider palate for how a kitchen can work. Today, Gregory Gourdet is owner of Kann (since 2019) and Culinary Director of Printemps (since 2025). The positions sit on top of a career built in stages rather than in a single leap, with each city and room adding another layer of operational and creative control.

Today

Kann in Portland, Oregon is both the owner’s restaurant and the chef’s most visible expression of range. Gregory Gourdet is the owner of Kann and the chef and founder of Kann and Sousòl, with the restaurant built around live fire and traditional Haitian flavors, and with dishes that pull in the cuisines of the African and Caribbean diaspora. Sousòl extends that same thinking below ground, as Kann’s subterranean sibling cocktail bar inspired by the greater Pan-Caribbean. The arrangement gives the work a useful contrast: one room built around flame and directness, the other around a darker, more compressed setting, but both pointed at lineage and movement rather than nostalgia. At Printemps in New York, Gregory Gourdet is Culinary Director, a role that ties the work back to a city he names plainly as home: “I’m a New Yorker, so this is very much a full-circle, coming-home moment for me.” The line is practical rather than sentimental. It places the role in the context of return, and return in the context of a career already shaped by movement between markets, restaurants, and formats.

Signature

Gregory Gourdet's signature dishes include Everyone’s Table: Global Recipes for Modern Health, Kann, Sousòl, and Maison Passerelle. Read together, the list points to a chef whose work moves across formats without losing the same governing idea: food as a way to organize memory, place, and technique into something usable in service.

In Their Words “We don’t have to eat everything. We can just taste a little of everything.” The line is useful because it describes method as much as appetite. To taste rather than overtake is to work with restraint, to keep the palate alert, and to treat abundance as something to be edited rather than consumed in one sweep. That’s a useful stance for a cook whose career has been built on taking in influence, sorting it, and returning it in clearer form.

Recognition

Gregory Gourdet's honors include James Beard Award, Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific (Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington) (2024), James Beard Award, Best New Restaurant (2023), James Beard Media Award, Best General Cookbook (2022), James Beard Award finalist, Best Chef: Northwest & Pacific, Chef of the Year, and Hottest Chef. The awards cover restaurant work, publishing, and public profile, but they also mark consistency: a body of work that has stayed disciplined across formats, with recognition following the same line of craft.