User:Remy Pettus

Remy was born and raised in south Minneapolis and grew up in the Lynhurst neighborhood. He got his first restaurant job as a server at It’s Greek To Me in Minneapolis after dropping out of UW-Madison. The restaurant industry immediately resonated with him, and he began learning as much as possible.

Remy discovered the emotional potential of food when he had an opportunity to assist a chef named Roger Johnsson on a private dinner just after his restaurant, Aquavit Minneapolis, closed. It was seven courses and served to ten people inside a home, and it blew Remy’s mind. He asked Roger if he could find him a job, so Roger set him up with a two days per week unpaid stage opportunity at a French restaurant that Roger co-owned called A Rebours. After three months of working for free, he landed his first paid job as a banquet prep cook at a country club in Minneapolis under Chef Ferris Schiffer.

Remy’s first restaurant job was at Vincent A Restaurant in downtown Minneapolis, From there he worked Nochee, and then he decided it was time to go to culinary school. Remy started at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York in March of 2006. Remy was group leader three out of his four semesters and did his externship at Moto Restaurant after getting them approved as the first new unpaid externship site in almost ten years since the CIA had banned them. Remy graduated third in his class of 78 students in October of 2007.

Remy then returned to Chicago to continue working at Moto, worked his way through the front of the house as required of all Moto cooks, and worked his way up to a station head under the leadership of the late Homaro Cantu. Omar, as everybody called him, did not like to be called chef, and he had a truly unique way of approaching restaurants and the dining experience. Remy considers Omar to be the biggest influence on his career to this point.

In the spring of 2009 Remy moved out to Healdsburg, California to work at Charlie Palmer’s flagship restaurant Dry Creek Kitchen in the heart of wine county. There he honed his skills working every station as Tournant. Remy spent two full growing seasons there before getting the urge to finally return to Minneapolis and join the emerging culinary scene in his hometown.

His first position when he returned in October of 2010 was at Cosmos Restaurant in the Graves 601 Hotel in downtown Minneapolis. He was promoted from Cook 1 to Chef de Cuisine within his first 6 months and spent another 2.5 years in that Position. In that role he was able to develop his cuisine through customized dining experiences and a chef’s table in the kitchen where he led a team that created over 200 unique and original dishes per year.

Upon leaving Cosmos in 2013, Remy developed and conceptualized a new restaurant in a historic theater in the western suburbs of Minneapolis in a, which sat on 11 acres of land where he built over 1.5 acres of production gardens and orchards including a 28-tree maple tapping operation, and on site foraging. When that restaurant was ready to go, Remy moved back to the city to approach his next challenge.

Remy opened Eastside in Minneapolis as Executive Chef in 2015 after almost a year of working on the project as a member of the design team for the physical space and the service concept. Eastside opened to rave reviews in nearly every local publication both online and print and earned 3 stars out of four from the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Remy was let go from that position the following spring for pushing his ideas and standards of service further than the owners were willing to consider.

While Remy was developing Bardo, he founded a catering company called Grain and Anchor with two chef friends, one of which became his opening Chef de Cuisine, Neil Bertucci. The two of them, along with renowned restaurant designer David Shea spent a year testing recipes, establishing a base clientele, and building out the space themselves.

Bardo opened to the public on August 27, 2017, and received some of the highest praise possible, including 3.5 stars out of 4 from the Star Tribune. The rest of that story is still being written.