Trey Smith

The Path

Training at Culinary Institute of America gave Smith the technical base that serious kitchen work tends to require. From there, his career in New Orleans, Louisiana moved through a sequence of roles that each added range to his craft. At Restaurant August, he served as chef, where technique and finish carried weight in every service. At MOPHO, he worked as co-sous chef, a post that depends on timing, coordination, and the ability to keep a busy kitchen aligned. Later, at Maypop, he became Head Chef, taking on responsibility for the flavor, pace, and day-to-day movement of the line. That kind of progression shows a chef built by accumulation rather than by a single decisive turn. Each kitchen sharpened the next, and the result is a working style that now sits inside his role as chef and co-owner of Saint-Germain, where the food is meant to fit the energy of the night and the practical demands of the bar.

The Work Today

At Saint-Germain in New Orleans, Smith now serves as chef and owner. The restaurant is organized around late nights, wine, and good bar food, and his job is to hold the style and tempo of that room together. In that setting, control matters as much as output: the kitchen has to stay precise without looking rigid, and the service has to feel easy even when the work is not. Smith puts the approach plainly: "We like to push things as far as we can." It is a useful sentence for understanding the work. The statement points to a kitchen that is not content to simply repeat itself, and to a chef whose practice has been shaped by demanding rooms and by the responsibilities of co-owning the place where that work lands.

In Their Words “Blake and I view cuisine somewhere between a sport and an art.” “My favorite cocktail is without question an old-fashioned.”