Liam Byres Joins Yolan as Its Chef de Cuisine

Liam Byres takes the pass at Yolan this summer with a résumé that has already moved through Dallas, Oklahoma City, Nashville, and Seattle. Liam Byres Chef de Cuisine at The Joseph, a Luxury Collection Hotel, Nashville, now leads the culinary program at Yolan, the hotel’s Italian dining destination, with Pastry Chef Janrich Amaro and Wine Manager Nicole Lee working beside him across the pastry and wine programs.

Yolan is built around a glass-enclosed, temperature-controlled cellar holding part of an approximately 1,200-bottle inventory, a wine program under Lee with more than 430 selections, and a pastry station under Amaro, who joined the team in 2025 after leading a seven-person pastry team at Grand Hyatt Nashville at age 21. Byres is the chef responsible for the savory program, the menu’s Italian technique, and the mentorship culture behind the line (Hospitality Net¹).

Liam Byres Joins Yolan as Chef de Cuisine

The Joseph identifies Yolan as Nashville’s only Forbes Travel Guide Star Award restaurant, and the room already carries weight through its Italian cooking, its wine program, and the hotel frame around it. Byres brings experience from small kitchens, chef-driven restaurants, live-fire tasting menus, Spanish tapas, Seattle dining rooms, and the family restaurant work that first put him near the stove.

At Yolan, Byres’ stated approach rests on seasonality, bold flavors, classic Italian technique, and thoughtful mentorship. Those words matter most when they become line behavior. Seasonality at Yolan means produce from farms throughout Tennessee and Kentucky, used within a menu that also draws on specialty ingredients from Italy. Italian technique gives the kitchen its grammar; the regional produce gives Byres his changing vocabulary. The point of the pass is to make those two pressures meet without letting either one flatten the other.

Verlord Laguatan, Chef and Beverage Director of The Joseph, supports Byres as he leads Yolan’s culinary team and guides the evolution of the menus. Hotel restaurants can fail when authority is blurred between property, restaurant, beverage, and service. Byres holds the culinary pass, Amaro carries pastry, Lee runs wine, and Laguatan supports the broader food and beverage direction.

Dallas, Tim Byres, and the First Lessons on the Line

Byres was raised in Dallas in a restaurant family. Tim Byres, chef and restaurateur, gave him his first close view of hospitality, and StarChefs has noted that Liam grew up working at his father’s restaurant. Byres did not follow a formal culinary school path. A restaurant family teaches through proximity: who arrives early, who stays late, who cleans when service ends, who keeps calm when a station goes under. The lessons are rarely named in the moment. They come back later, when a cook has to decide how to run a room.

Byres attended The University of Oklahoma, then left school and worked as a line cook for Tim Byres at Smoke in Dallas. Working for a parent can soften a young cook or harden the standards around him; either way, the station gives immediate feedback. Food leaves the pass or it does not. Mise holds or it collapses. A cook learns whether he wants the life when the ticket rail fills and the room keeps asking.

Smoke placed Byres inside a restaurant led by his chef-restaurateur father. That distinction follows him into Yolan. It requires menu judgment, staff development, hotel fluency, and the ability to work with pastry, wine, and service without turning collaboration into committee work. The early Dallas years gave Byres a view of the whole machine before he had authority over one.

Oklahoma City and Dallas: Nonesuch, Pyles, and McCallister

After Dallas and The University of Oklahoma, Byres worked at Nonesuch in Oklahoma City. StarChefs connects that period with local sourcing and kitchen organization, two habits that now read directly into his position at Yolan. Local sourcing at the level of a menu includes buying from nearby farms. It asks the kitchen to adjust when the product changes, when the farm delivers less than planned, when weather moves the season ahead or holds it back. Organization is the counterweight. Without it, seasonality turns into improvisation without discipline.

Byres later worked for Chef Stephan Pyles at Flora Street Cafe and Fauna in Dallas. Pyles is a James Beard Award-winning chef, and Byres’ time under him places a named mentor in the lineage. Byres spent time in Dallas kitchens tied to Chef Stephan Pyles, a chef with a long regional and national presence, then continued to Homewood under Chef Matt McCallister.

Homewood adds another named Dallas kitchen to the formation. McCallister’s role is specific: Byres developed his craft there. That middle period sat between family restaurant work and first head chef authority. He is collecting methods, watching how chefs correct plates, how they talk to sous chefs, how they decide when a dish has too many ideas on it. Byres carries that sequence into Yolan: Smoke, Nonesuch, Flora Street Cafe, Fauna, Homewood. The names form a map of practical education.

Nashville Before Yolan: Cry Wolf, Firebrand, and Lola

Byres served as Head Chef at Cry Wolf, the first head chef role in his career. A first head chef position changes a cook’s relationship to the pass. In a first head chef position, the mistakes become public, the training becomes daily, and the menu becomes the chef’s responsibility. Cry Wolf gave Byres that first test before his move to Nashville.

In Nashville, Byres returned to work with his father at Firebrand. The project is a live-fire tasting menu concept. Live-fire cooking puts timing, heat judgment, and product handling in front of the cook. A tasting menu adds sequence: one dish has to prepare the guest for the next, and the kitchen has to repeat that sequence through service without losing pace. Byres’ return to Tim Byres at Firebrand brought the family lineage into a different city and a tighter format.

Byres then worked as head chef at Lola, and The Joseph’s announcement identifies his role there as Culinary Director and Executive Chef of the Spanish tapas restaurant. Tapas service asks a kitchen to manage multiple small plates, pacing across tables, and a guest experience that can move quickly or linger. It also gave Byres a Nashville leadership chapter before Yolan, which matters for the current appointment. He returns to a city where he has already led kitchens, not a market he must learn from the lobby outward.

Seattle Pressure: Eldr, Raccolto, and a StarChefs Nod

In 2024, Byres moved to Seattle and landed at ELDR, working under Brian Clevenger and Ricardo Valdes. That move introduced another set of named chefs into his formation. It also placed him in a city with a different produce rhythm, a different seafood culture, and a different restaurant audience than Dallas, Oklahoma City, or Nashville. At ELDR, Byres worked inside a new kitchen, under new leadership, in a new dining market (Starchefs²).

After a fire in early 2025 temporarily closed ELDR, Byres moved to Raccolto in West Seattle. He revamped the menu there, then later returned to Nashville for Yolan. The fire is not a decorative plot point. It marks a forced interruption in a chef’s working year, the kind that tests whether momentum comes from a room or from the cook’s own habits. Raccolto became the next bench, and the menu overhaul gave Byres another leadership exercise before The Joseph appointment (Starchefs²).

StarChefs named Byres a 2025 Seattle Rising Stars Award winner. The recognition was tied to ingredient-driven cooking and collaborative leadership, which aligns closely with the language now attached to his role at Yolan. The phrase Liam Byres Chef de Cuisine now carries that recent Seattle recognition into Nashville, along with the older Dallas and Oklahoma City formation. Awards do not cook dinner. They do, however, mark the moment when peers and industry watchers begin tracking a chef’s next room with more care (Starchefs³).

Italian Technique, Tennessee and Kentucky Produce, Italian Ingredients

Yolan’s culinary program under Byres is built around classic Italian technique paired with seasonal produce from Tennessee and Kentucky farms, complemented by specialty ingredients from Italy. The kitchen is not described through a single signature plate. It is described through a sourcing and technique relationship: regional farms on one side, Italian ingredients and methods on the other.

Yolan uses classic Italian technique as a structural foundation. It means the kitchen uses Italian craft as its foundation rather than treating Italy as surface styling. Seasonality sets the calendar. Bold flavors set the palate expectation. Mentorship sets the staff culture. Those three things have to meet at the pass every night or the language becomes decoration.

Yolan’s menu is a chef-led Italian program inside a Nashville hotel, with Tennessee and Kentucky produce built into the seasonal logic. Byres’ appointment puts mentorship into the job description. A chef who has worked as a line cook for Tim Byres, trained in kitchens connected to Stephan Pyles and Matt McCallister, worked under Brian Clevenger and Ricardo Valdes, and led rooms in Nashville and Seattle has a layered view of how cooks learn. At Yolan, the handoff matters as much as the dish.

Janrich Amaro and Nicole Lee Complete the Table

Byres does not lead Yolan alone. Pastry Chef Janrich Amaro joined Yolan’s pastry team in 2025 and brings a technique-driven approach to Italian pastry. His background began in Hyatt banquet kitchens, where large-scale production builds habits that small tasting rooms sometimes overlook: repetition, portion control, timing, and consistency across a full program. At 21, Amaro became Pastry Chef at Grand Hyatt Nashville and oversaw a seven-person team and the hotel’s dessert program (Hospitality Net¹).

At Yolan, Amaro works with classic Italian desserts through a contemporary lens, with balance, clarity, and presentation named as priorities. The pastry role matters because Italian dining rooms can treat dessert as an afterthought once pasta, meat, and wine have done the visible work. Yolan’s structure places Amaro as one of the three named leaders beside Byres and Lee. That makes pastry part of the restaurant’s method, rather than a closing gesture.

Lee, Yolan’s Wine Manager, leads a program with more than 430 selections. She is a Certified Sommelier and WSET Level 2 professional, and her background includes bartending during college, work at Omni Nashville Hotel and The Palm, and six years at Kayne Prime as Service Captain and a member of the sommelier team. At Yolan, the wine list has particular strengths in Piemonte, Brunello di Montalcino, and Burgundy. The dining room’s glass-enclosed, temperature-controlled cellar holds part of an approximately 1,200-bottle inventory, giving guests a visible sense of the program’s scale before a bottle reaches the table (Hospitality Net¹).

Italian technique and wine service are tied tightly at Yolan. Piemonte and Brunello di Montalcino are not neutral list headings in an Italian restaurant; they shape the meal’s pacing, the guest’s choices, and the way the kitchen’s bold flavors meet acidity, tannin, and age. Lee’s role turns the savory menu into a conversation with the cellar, and Amaro’s pastry station gives the meal its final structure.

What to Watch as Byres Shapes Yolan’s Next Menus

The next visible work from Byres will come through Yolan’s menus, not through a single announcement. The kitchen expresses Tennessee and Kentucky produce through Italian technique, Amaro’s pastry program closes the meal, and Lee’s list frames the table. The appointment gives Nashville a chef with time on the tools in Dallas, Oklahoma City, Nashville, and Seattle, now working inside a room where the pass, the pastry station, and the cellar have named hands behind them.

Byres’ move gives young cooks a lineage. Tim Byres appears at the beginning and again at Firebrand. Stephan Pyles, Matt McCallister, Brian Clevenger, and Ricardo Valdes mark later stages of training and work. Janrich Amaro and Nicole Lee now stand beside him in the current program. Yolan’s next work will include menu changes, staff development, pairings, and the nightly discipline of a hotel dining room where the cellar is visible and the pass has a new chef calling the work.