‘If You Were a Chef in the City … You Had a Moment With Him’

James Kent, right, in the kitchen at his restaurant Crown Shy. Photo: CAITLIN OCHS/CAITLIN OCHS/The New York Times/Redux

The restaurant world was shocked to learn on Saturday that James Kent had died. The news was first shared by his restaurant group, which ended its announcement with a message to “Celebrate Father’s Day with your loved ones.” The official cause of death was a heart attack, according to a representative.

Kent — who was just 45 and is survived by his wife, Kelly, and their children, Gavin and Avery — had earned accolades for his restaurants, Crown Shy and Saga, and cocktail bar, Overstory, and was working on a handful of new projects set to debut in the coming months. All weekend, tributes spread across social media as the industry mourned the loss of one of its brightest stars. What emerged, in the tributes as well as conversations with friends and acquaintances, is a portrait of a fine-dining lifer who’d earned the highest respect among his peers, who was unusually supportive of his industry, and who was eager to serve as a mentor and friend.

“If you were a chef in the city, you knew him,” says Danny Garcia, the executive chef of Saga Hospitality Group’s new restaurant at 360 Park Avenue South. “You had a moment with him; he touched you in some way, whether it was for five seconds or a series of years.” Kent’s restaurants were closed on Sunday, but his wife kept the doors open so staff could grieve. As word spread, others from around the industry showed up to pay their respects as well. Flowers were brought in, along with an illustration of Kent and a Biggie Buddha figurine. (The chef was a huge fan of the Brooklyn rapper.) Daniel Boulud sent food. “It was basically an impromptu family meal celebrating James,” says Gavin Kaysen, Kent’s close friend of 17 years. The chef, who runs Spoon and Stable and other restaurants in Minneapolis, was at Aspen Food & Wine on Saturday with Garcia and Garcia’s wife, pastry chef Sumaiya Bangee. They all flew back to New York on Sunday.

Over the past two days, social media has been filled with tributes from friends and colleagues including Boulud, Alain Ducasse, Mei Lin, Bryce Schuman, Suzanne Cupps, and Nina Compton. “I met James back in 2010 when I was a very green cook,” Lin wrote. “He showed me kindness that I’ll never forget, in an industry where you rarely received that type of kindness.”

Raised in Greenwich Village, Kent — whose first name was Jamal — worked in restaurants from a young age. In a 2021 interview, he said that he would “slowly sneak into the kitchen and start, like, playing with the food” at an uncle’s restaurant. When Kent was 14, he approached his neighbor, David Bouley, who let him apprentice in his own restaurant. Bouley was the first of many influential places he would work. He later found himself at Babbo, where he worked during the time Bill Buford wrote Heat; Jean-Georges; and Eleven Madison Park, where his public profile first began to grow.

Kent rose to become EMP’s chef de cuisine, and he represented the U.S. in the Bocuse d’Or culinary competition. His time at the restaurant changed his life in more ways than one: He had his first child, Gavin — named for Kaysen, who was his coach for the competition — while working there, and later shared that his experience at Eleven Madison Park reshaped the way in which he lived his life. He had experienced panic attacks at work, leading him to change his lifestyle and take up running. Throughout his career, Kent talked about prioritizing mental health, and other chefs who worked with him shared stories of a colleague who was, above all else, kind.

“James has been a consistent person in the way he approaches life and leadership and his career. The industry, at least 12 years ago, wasn’t very kind to Black people,” says Michael Adé Elégbèdé, who runs Ìtàn Test Kitchen in Lagos. Elégbèdé came to New York 12 years ago as a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, and his first job was at Eleven Madison Park, where Kent was at the time. Both EMP and the Nomad, where he became the executive chef, were, like other fine-dining kitchens, very white spaces. “He always made sure that he made me feel that I was not alone, even when I was the only Black person in the kitchen,” Elégbèdé says.

Other cooks, Elégbèdé says, have shared similar stories with him. On her Instagram page, Bangee recalled her first day at EMP, when Kent made sure to introduce himself and to tell her that his father was Muslim as well, adding, “Whatever you need, I got your back.” (In a 2022 interview, Kent shared that he began using “James,” his middle name, on his résumé after September 11.)

Grace Kim, who worked at Crown Shy in 2019, says she admired Kent for the way he operated both in and out of the kitchen: “His commitment to his family was also next level, and that is one of the many other reasons I respect Chef as a human being,” she says. She described him as someone who “literally always showed up” to restaurants where his former cooks were working, either with his son or his wife and friends, and always made sure to give words of encouragement. “That man does not need to do that, but he chooses to go out of his way to simply say ‘hi,’ support us, and encourage us.”

“Growing up, you think to be a chef, you almost have to be insufferable and be a narcissistic expression of self to get any form of respect in the industry,” says Elégbèdé. What Kent showed was that “you can be talented, you can be great, and you can be passionate without being this clichéd idea of what a chef is.”

Kent was a chef who could navigate the sometimes difficult divide between old-guard chefs and a younger generation. Over text, the restaurateur Drew Nieporent wrote: “James Kent was the future of cooking in America.”

This morning, Crown High, the running group Kent started, gathered for a memorial run, and tonight, Kaysen will be at Crown Shy as it reopens. “I think it’s really important that we celebrate who he was, what he meant to people, what he continues to mean to people,” Kaysen says. “I’m going to do service with the team, just helping them out and being there if they need anything. I know that he would do it if the roles were reversed.”

On Saturday morning, Saga’s culinary director Jassimran Singh had been texting with Kent about a planned pop-up with Masque, the Mumbai fine-dining restaurant, and about going to a Yankees game this week. He was at work at Crown Shy when, at 4:30, he got the call that Kent had died. “Obviously working in restaurants is not the easiest thing, but I think that working with him for the last ten years is the best years I’ll have,” Singh says. “I’m going to miss him every day for the rest of my life.”

This post has been updated to include the official cause of death.