i. Biography
New American cooking, when tied to Virginia products and Richmond’s Southern influences, depends on restraint as much as sourcing. In Patrick Willis’s kitchen, the plate stays close to its ingredients: clean flavor, visible technique, and a regional frame built through purveyors, composition, and seasonality rather than decoration. Virginia farms, waterways, and the Southern table provide the working vocabulary. “Without this deeply ingrained skill, our flavor and presentation will suffer.” Patrick has said.
The Route
Professional kitchen training begins with repetition and pressure before it becomes style. Patrick Willis trained at East Carolina University, then worked as a restaurant kitchen worker at Tanglewood Ordinary in Maidens, Virginia, where the base of the trade was service-to-service discipline, station work, and stamina. Hotel dining rooms demand consistency at scale, with timing and technique held to a narrow margin. In 2009, Willis moved to Lemaire at The Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, Virginia, as a Line Cook, then rose to Sous Chef, serving in that role until 2016. That stretch built the kind of fluency that comes from knowing the stations, the room’s standards, and the mechanics of a kitchen under pressure. Continuity matters in a restaurant kitchen when the chef has come up inside its systems. Since 2016, Patrick has been Executive Chef of Lemaire at The Jefferson Hotel, carrying forward one of Richmond’s defining dining rooms from within its own pace, habits, and expectations rather than arriving with an external template.
Current Practice
The current cooking at Lemaire is organized around Virginia products, fresh ingredients, local sourcing, Richmond-area purveyors, and products from the Chesapeake Bay. In Willis’s hands, the ingredient work stays legible: clean flavors, quality ingredients, and visible technique shape the menu without burying the source material. Regional cooking gains weight when it is handled as method, not theme. Virginia-grown ingredients, Richmond’s Southern influences, and locally sourced food form the through-line of Willis’s menu, with balance and restraint doing the work: richness sharpened, sweetness checked, and familiar Southern references kept polished rather than overworked. A compact example of that approach is the Crispy Deviled Egg with Edwards VA Smokehouse ham, red pepper preserves, and cornichons, served when Willis appeared as a featured chef at Shell-Raiser’s Shindig. The construction is recognizable in outline, then tightened through contrast: crispness, smoke, brightness, and acidity in a composed bite.
Signature
The signature dish “Layered” points to structure as a working principle. In Patrick Willis’s cooking, the name reads as a concern with sequence, assembly, and keeping elements distinct while making them function as one plate.
Profile updated July 2026
FAQ
Asked of Patrick
What is Patrick Willis's present role?
Patrick Willis is Executive Chef.
Where did Patrick Willis train or study?
Patrick Willis trained at East Carolina University.
What is Patrick Willis known for?
Locally sourced food at Lemaire.
