Ray Wells

The Path

Training at the Culinary Institute of America set the base for Ray Wells before the Turning Stone kitchens became the place where that training was tested and extended. He worked first as a cook at Season’s Harvest in Turning Stone, then as Chef de tournant at Yellow Brick Road Casino in Turning Stone, building toward a role that would require more range and more consistency. Since 2015, he has served as Head Chef of TS Steakhouse, where the job calls for keeping steakhouse classics intact while adjusting to shifts in availability and quality. The progression is straightforward: each step added responsibility, and each one sharpened the instincts now used at the top.

The Work Today

The menu logic under Ray Wells accounts for growing conditions as well as the calendar, which is why seasonality here is treated as something observed, not assumed. “It’s important not to just think about what’s in season every year, but to consider what the weather has been like.” That approach matters in Classic American steakhouse cooking with local sourcing, where timing and restraint can do as much work as technique. The result is a menu that stays connected to place without becoming rigid, and that can change without losing its frame.

In Their Words “It’s important not to just think about what’s in season every year, but to consider what the weather has been like.” “It would be easy to do what everyone else is doing and keep the classics on the menu forever.” Taken together, the quotes describe a kitchen philosophy built on keeping the classic forms in play without freezing them in place. The point is not to move away from the steakhouse canon, but to keep it responsive as conditions change. That leaves room for discipline, but also for decisions grounded in observation.

Acclaim

The 2015 appointment is the clearest marker in Ray Wells’s record, the point where the trajectory comes into focus. His work today sits in Classic American steakhouse cooking with local sourcing, a combination that reflects both the training from the Culinary Institute of America and the ingredient-conscious discipline he brings to TS Steakhouse at Turning Stone in Verona.