Two R.I. chefs to compete in Food & Wine Best New Chef contest

NEMO BOLIN, pictured above at left in his role as head chef of the Cook & Brown Public House in Providence, is one of two Rhode Island chefs nominated to compete in the Food & Wine 2014 People's Best New Chef contest. / COURTESY COOK & BROWN PUBLIC HOUSE
NEMO BOLIN, pictured above at left in his role as head chef of the Cook & Brown Public House in Providence, is one of two Rhode Island chefs nominated to compete in the Food & Wine 2014 People's Best New Chef contest. / COURTESY COOK & BROWN PUBLIC HOUSE

JAMESTOWN – Food & Wine magazine has nominated two Rhode Island chefs to compete in the fourth annual People’s Best New Chef award contest, which honors talented up-and-coming culinary professionals who have run their own kitchens for fewer than five years.

Matthew MacCartney, executive chef and partner at Jamestown Fish, and Nemo Bolin, proprietor and head chef at Cook & Brown Public House in Providence, are among 100 chefs or chef teams nominated from 10 regions across the country to compete in the 2014 People’s Best New Chef contest. The chef with the most votes in each region will be named a finalist, and the finalist with the most votes overall will be named the People’s Best New Chef.

Voting began at 10 a.m. on Monday, March 24, and will continue through 5 p.m. on Monday, March 31. Voters can submit their choice for the People’s Best New Chef at www.foodandwine.com.

The finalists and winner will be revealed April 2 on the Food & Wine website.

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MacCartney has been with Jamestown Fish since its inception in December 2011. A self-described “casually elegant” restaurant serving European-inspired seafood cuisine, Jamestown Fish received the Wine Spectator Award of Excellence, the Rhode Island Monthly Best of Rhode Island, and several OpenTable Diners’ Choice awards in 2012 and 2013.

Before joining Jamestown Fish, MacCartney worked in dining rooms and kitchens of New York establishments and European restaurants including Michel Guérard, a Michelin three-star restaurant in France. MacCartney earned his bachelor’s degree in hospitality management and culinary arts from NYC College of Technology and studied at the Birmingham College of Food, Tourism & Creative Studies in England.

Bolin worked his way through restaurants in San Francisco and Cambridge, Mass., inspired by his childhood growing up on Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., where his family had a backyard garden and fished for their own seafood. He now runs Cook & Brown in Providence, “a modern, New England-inspired version of a European gastropub.”

A graduate of the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, Bolin told Food & Wine of his motivation for starting a restaurant, “I live to hear that unmistakable sigh when someone takes the first bite of their meal and just melts into the chair.”

The other New England chefs competing in the 2014 People’s Best New Chef contest are:

  • Carolyn Johnson of 80 Thoreau (Concord, Mass.)
  • Jeffrey Lizotte of ON20 (Hartford, Conn.)
  • Matt Louis of Moxy (Portsmouth, N.H.)
  • Tim Maslow of Strip-T’s (Watertown, Mass.) and Ribelle (Brookline, Mass.)
  • Bjorn Somlo of Nudel (Lenox, Mass.)
  • Cara Stadler of Tao Yuan (Brunswick, Maine)
  • Phillip Tang of East by Northeast (Cambridge, Mass.)
  • Andrew Taylor and Mike Wiley of Eventide Oyster Co. and Hugo’s (Portland, Maine)

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