When the chef and restaurateur James Kent died suddenly of a heart attack last month at 45, the looming question was who would lead his kitchen and restaurant group. In the culture of his company, no single person is considered to be a replacement. As when Mr. Kent was alive, team effort drives the group.
“He trusted the people around him and he left a blueprint as to what the company was going to be,” said Danny Garcia, who will be the executive chef of Time & Tide, the seafood restaurant that Mr. Kent planned to open this year.
One prominent change is the Saga Hospitality Group name. On June 16, the day after Mr. Kent died, the company best known for the restaurants Crown Shy, Saga and the bar Overstory (all in the landmark Art Deco skyscraper at 70 Pine Street in the financial district) became Kent Hospitality Group. The renaming was decided upon by the partners. Kelly Kent, Mr. Kent’s wife and partner in the company, seconded it.
“If it were up to Jamal the name would not have been changed,” Mr. Garcia said. (Mr. Kent, whose full name was Jamal James Kent, is referred to as Jamal by many.)
Also new is the addition of Charlie Mitchell, the executive chef of Clover Hill, in Brooklyn Heights, which has a Michelin star. He announced his departure Wednesday from Clover Hill after two years and will now assume the reins as executive chef of Saga, the tasting menu restaurant with two Michelin stars on the 63rd floor of 70 Pine Street.
What has happened at Kent Hospitality echoes what happened 30 years ago at Le Bernardin, when the chef and partner Gilbert Le Coze died of a heart attack at 49. The chef Eric Ripert stepped into his shoes, maintaining and enhancing the restaurant’s world-famous luster, and making his name.
But given the mind-set that Mr. Kent established for his company, Mr. Mitchell is adding talent and luster — but will not be its face. The 31-year-old Detroit native, now a Brooklyn resident, considered Mr. Kent to be his mentor. They met at the Michelin award ceremony in New York in 2022 when Clover Hill was anointed. “I was like this little fanboy at the event, running around to meet chefs like Gabriel Kreuther and James Kent,” he said during an interview in Manhattan last week. “James was the first to embrace me before he had even tried my food.”
Without formal culinary school training, but after a childhood nourished by the cooking of his grandmother and mother, Mr. Mitchell landed jobs and stages at restaurants like Forest, in Birmingham, Mich.; Benu, in San Francisco; Jônt, in Washington, D.C.; and Betony, Eleven Madison Park, Per Se and Blue Hill, in Manhattan. He was attracted to fine dining, and said he knew he was occasionally in over his head, notably at the three-Michelin-star Benu. But he soldiered on. Much of his experience was at tasting menu restaurants, inspiring his approach at Clover Hill.
After they met in New York, Mr. Kent stayed in touch with Mr. Mitchell, offering advice and eventually dining at Clover Hill with Mrs. Kent.
“When I saw that his name was in the mix for Saga, I reached out to him,” said Mrs. Kent, who lives at 70 Pine Street with her two children and will be more active than ever in the company founded by her teenage sweetheart and husband.
Mr. Mitchell, now a chef and partner in the company, said that at Saga he won’t be imitating Mr. Kent’s approach. “I never cooked with him, so I have to make it my style of cooking.”
At Clover Hill that meant a spotlight on seafood and some Japanese touches. Smoked prawn and tomato dumplings, shima aji (striped horse mackerel) with caviar and dry-aged Rohan duck are on his latest menu there. He will introduce his new menu at Saga in the fall, he said; it will include some larger-format communal courses, not just tasting portions.
At Crown Shy, downstairs from Saga, Jassimran Singh, who has been with the company for several years, will head the kitchen team. Overstory, the bar at Saga, is run by Harrison Ginsberg. Like Mr. Mitchell, both chefs have become partners in the company.
As for Time & Tide, Mr. Garcia, the executive chef and also a partner, said that he and Mr. Kent had settled on a concept best described as seafood done “classic New York steak house style.” They looked to the Grand Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant, where both chefs dined while growing up.
The restaurant will also have a small retail bakery to be run by Renata Ameni, the company’s executive pastry chef. She has another project with the group, a full bakery and all-day cafe a ground floor space in the Domino Sugar Factory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to open next year.
As previously announced, Kent Hospitality will be the operating partner for five restaurants in a new financial district store by the French department store, Printemps, to open in 2026. These expansions are made possible with backing from LRMR Ventures, the private investment firm of LeBron James and Maverick Carter.
Many years ago when asked why he keeps opening new places, the restaurateur Danny Meyer said that after training chefs it was better to offer them new opportunities with the company than to see them go elsewhere. Mr. Kent had the same approach. “Jamal kept his burgeoning chefs by giving them new projects,” Mr. Garcia said.
As Mrs. Kent put it, “he wanted to see all these young chefs he’d been mentoring continue to grow and thrive.” Having LeBron James’s company as an investor and partner in Kent Hospitality will secure the thriving part.
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