At age 32, Ryan Ratino already has two Michelin-starred restaurants. Bresca, a “Bistronomy” style restaurant offering fine-dining food in a casual setting in Washington D.C., has a Michelin star, and its upstairs neighbor, Jônt, is a 15-seat 20-course tasting-menu extravaganza that has two Michelin stars. But that’s not enough. The chef is working on a 34-seat restaurant in the city’s Wharf district that will be an homage to the cuisines of chefs such as Joël Robuchon, Paul Bocuse, and Alain Ducasse, plus all the trappings of the grand European restaurants of yesteryear, but with up-to-date music, “maybe a little bit too loud … but that’s what we do,” Ratino said.
That restaurant will be attached to a high-end cocktail bar the chef said he hopes will be a beverage-version of Jônt.
Both of those as-yet-unnamed venues are slated to open in late summer or early fall of next year, as is another restaurant, also without a name so far, at the Four Seasons Hotel and Residences Fort Lauderdale.
The Florida restaurant will feature straightforward but high-end seafood.
The native of Medina, Ohio, attended Le Cordon Bleu in Orlando, Fla., and worked in that city after graduation, including three years under Todd English at Bluezoo, before moving to New York and working at WD-50 under Wylie Dufresne and Dovetail under John Fraser.
In D.C., he worked at José Andrés’s Minibar, as well as Ripple and Masa 14, plus at L’Auberge Provençale in White Post, Va.
Ratino recently discussed his upcoming projects.
Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected]
