Renee Touponce

Renee Touponce’s path in the kitchen began at home in Torrington, Connecticut, where she made empanadas with her mom. That early practice established the foundation for a career built on dough, filling, repetition, and care, and it remained a clear thread in her work. Formal training at New England Culinary Institute in Essex, Vermont, gave that family base a professional frame and helped shape the technical discipline that would carry through her career.

Her experience grew through the everyday labor of restaurant life. She worked as a server, prep cook, and dishwasher at an elderly community kitchen and restaurant, roles that placed both back-of-house repetition and front-of-house timing at the center of her development. Those jobs built range and fluency in the mechanics of hospitality, where clean work, steady pace, and readiness mattered as much as skill. Mystic, Connecticut, became the setting for the next stage of that growth, and her career continued there through hands-on work in local kitchens and food spaces.

In Mystic, she joined 85th Day Food Community in 2017 and later worked at Grass & Bone and Stone Acres Farm. These roles expanded her experience across sourcing, preparation, service, and community contact. Her path through those kitchens was cumulative rather than sudden, shaped by station work and the practical demands of keeping restaurant operations moving. The same line carried forward into leadership, where responsibility widened from individual tasks to the standards and consistency of whole kitchens.

Renee Touponce is Executive Chef of Oyster Club in Mystic, Connecticut, a role she has held since 2021, and Executive Chef of The Port of Call in Mystic, Connecticut, a role she has held since 2022. She also holds the Chef/Owner title at Oyster Club and The Port of Call. In these positions, her work extends beyond cooking alone to include setting standards, translating decisions into service, and maintaining each restaurant’s identity through daily execution.

The leadership she brings is grounded in the same foundation that shaped her early development: family cooking, culinary school, and years of hands-on work inside Mystic’s food community. The clearest line back to her origins remains the empanadas she made with her mother, but her cooking is not limited to a single memory. Her broader work has included seafood, terrine work, and seasoned pork, all part of the same kitchen vocabulary.

Recognition has followed that steady development, including James Beard Awards Best Chef: Northeast semifinalist, James Beard Awards Best Chef: Northeast nominee, and Chef of the Year. Through each stage, Renee Touponce’s career has been defined by practical training, local continuity, and earned responsibility inside service.