Greg Grossman: Chef Prodigy

On the surface, Greg Grossman seems like a normal 17-year-old with his floppy brown hair, crisp style and cool confidence.

But to many seasoned chefs, Greg is no normal teenager. He’s something of a cooking prodigy.

The former Ross School student is having none of it, though.

“I don’t support the terminology, really. In Europe, people start working in kitchens far younger than I did,” Greg said on Friday afternoon at The Plaza Hotel in Manhattan over a cup of cappuccino, stealing away for an hour in between meetings on two projects he’s consulting. “I guess people say that to refer to someone who excels at an early age. I don’t like putting myself on a pedestal like that. I’m just a kid that likes to cook. I’m terrible at everything else. It’s true.”

Greg landed his first job bussing tables and washing dishes at age 8 in an East Hampton restaurant, though he declined to name the eatery that is now out of business, after his parents, Ed and Terre, retired and moved out to their summer home full-time. He enrolled at Ross School in fifth grade and didn’t tell his friends about his job, though he was soon after promoted to running the pizza station. He was nervous he’d be teased, he said.

A year later, Greg made his first meal at home: seared scallops with reduced balsamic vinegar, sautéed mushrooms and asparagus, his mother claims, though he can’t attest to that, the chef said.

“She says I kicked her out of the kitchen. I’ve seen photos and it looked great for a 9-year-old. I wouldn’t be complaining,” he laughed. “I definitely stopped doing other things and focused on cooking. That’s not to say that I didn’t play video games and have a normal childhood, to some extent. But it really ended up being about food.”

After his first catering gig at age 9 for Vered Art Gallery in East Hampton, Greg caught the industry’s eye and began commuting back and forth to Manhattan five days a week for work. Then the economy tanked when he was in ninth grade.

“My parents, like everyone, sort of lost everything. We moved back to the city,” he recalled. “My dad’s 70 now, but he’s working full-time again. My mom’s working, also. I finished my last year of Ross living on friends’ couches because we lost our house, so it was definitely an interesting change that thrusted me into cooking more.”

He enrolled in the Professional Children’s School in Manhattan, a high school curriculum that allowed him to simultaneously attend classes while focusing on his career. In 2008, he founded the Culinaria Group, which began as a catering company and, in recent years, has shifted more toward consulting, Greg said.

Until that point, he had solely worked in kitchens—head down, blindly following orders and learning, as he describes it. But the entrepreneur in him was intrigued by the business side of food, he said, and is currently developing a half-dozen projects, including Ducks Eatery in the East Village, an innovative snack menu for a cocktail bar in Manhattan, a local Malaysian food truck now in production, a new restaurant in Tribeca and a fundraising project for packaging technology that’s “very top secret,” he said. And those are just the ones he can talk about.

“It’s been a wild ride the past couple years,” he said. “I feel like I’ve lived a 20-year life in the past five years. Just thinking about who I was at 10, 11, even though it was only a couple years ago, it’s shocking, I feel like it’s a different life.”

He flipped through old photos of himself cooking in the kitchen, quietly laughing at his then-signature, long brunette locks falling in front of his face.

“Look at that hair,” he commented. “Who would ever do that? I must have been an idiot. I’m actually going to go upstairs and get it cut. It’s long. I’m at the point where I’m pushing it back. My girlfriend laid down the law.”

In September, Greg will be 18 and a freshman at New York University Gallatin School of Individualized Study, where he was just accepted for early decision, he said. He plans to study entrepreneurship, hospitality and restaurant management, food studies, nutrition and business.

Culinary school was never a consideration, he said.

“Every chef I’ve ever worked with since I was 8 years old has told me, ‘Do not go to culinary school,’ so there was no way I was gonna go to culinary school,” he laughed. “They think that culinary school is an easy way out and then they can go and be on TV. They want to be the next Bobby Flay. And that’s not reality.”

Greg didn’t need culinary school to give television a try. Last year, he auditioned for Food Network’s “Chopped Junior” show. But after the interview, the execs decided to cast him on the adult series, which aired last month.

“I haven’t seen it, to be honest,” Greg said. “I took my first vacation in several years to Colorado in December for some skiing, which it turns out I’m not very good at. I was on the plane coming back, sitting in the last seat all the way in the back in the aisle. I put my bags down, sat down. It was two in the morning, I was ready to pass out and the TV comes on every seat of the plane and it’s all on the Food Network and it’s all me on ‘Chopped.’ And I was like, ‘Ugh,’ but at the same time fighting the urge to scream and stand up and go, ‘It’s me, it’s me! Look! Look!’ I fell asleep and didn’t watch it and haven’t seen it yet. My mom’s seen it, like, 20 times and says it’s not that bad.”

While the judges noted that Greg’s dish was the best of the first round, he said, the young chef made a devastating mistake that led to his downfall. He left one of the mystery basket ingredients in the oven.

“It was a humbling and great experience,” he said. “I learned a lot from it and, at the end of the day, take everything as a learning experience.”

His recent gaffe hasn’t slowed him down by any means. Recently, Greg grabbed the attention of YouTube channel THINKR, which produces a bi-weekly series, “Prodigies,” that documents the stories behind the youngest and brightest—Greg included.

“I am still a kid a heart. I just love food—eating it, specifically,” he said. “To me, this is normal. This isn’t weird to me. I can’t really imagine doing anything else. I just took a different path than a lot of different people. But I’m happy I did what I did.”

He finished his cappuccino, ran his hand through his hair and stood up. He was off to get a trim upstairs before his last consultation of the day.

“I couldn’t ask for another life,” he said.

To watch Greg Grossman on “Prodigies,” visit youtube.com/watch?v=Q0cNpH2YlTY.