A Homecoming for Chef Jeremy Blutstein

This is a story about a homecoming, of sorts. That may sound surprising, because Jeremy Blutstein, whom you may know from places like Showfish at Gurney’s, Almond, and — if you’ve been around for a while — the Crow’s Nest, hasn’t exactly gone anywhere. The chef has, in fact, been a fixture on the East End for a very long time. But for the past two years, he has been on an unofficial hiatus.

“I was a private chef,” he says of his most recent position. “And then, in the offseason, it doubled as property-management.”

It’s not that Blutstein had lost his passion for restaurants per sé. “My switch to private was driven by restaurants shutting down [during COVID-19],” he says. Blutstein’s wife, the East End mixologist and beverage consultant Jarhn Blutstein, was pregnant at the time, and the chef wanted a position with less assumption of risk.

During his two-year stint as a private chef, Blutstein still created enviable dishes: jewel-toned vegetables sourced by his friends and cohorts at Balsam Farms; locally sourced meats and poultry that involved all manner of culinary pyrotechnics; fish that had, just hours before, been swimming in Long Island waters, enlivened once more on a plate, all available for eyes to see on his Instagram, @chefblutstein.

But maybe — just maybe — he ached for the pace of the professional kitchen.

“I think that I’m a restaurant person,” he says. “I’m a sucker. I’m a recovering alcoholic, and I’m not a recovered restaurant person. There’s a level of addiction, when you think about it. You miss the chaos. You miss the insanity. You miss the camaraderie. You miss the day-to-days. You miss the human interaction.”

All of this frenetic energy — a potion that some brilliant entrepreneur should try to bottle to those of us who have spent time behind or in front of the line — is just part of why Blutstein is coming home, back to Montauk, where he spent much of his career working, at places like the Crow’s Nest, yes, but also at East by Northeast, which is due to reopen in the coming months as a gleaming, reimagined, tony steakhouse concept called Mavericks.

The restaurant is, for Blutstein, part of the point. He refers to it as a space that has opted not to “put lipstick on a pig.” Gutted down to the studs, the space has embarked on a mighty reconfiguration that addresses spatial configurations that muddled past successes. (Why, some of us asked, was a tiny bar set up at the restaurant’s front, making no use of a sunset-facing rear view?). The electrical work has been completely redone, along with other bonuses, like air conditioning for the kitchen staff, which, if you know anything about professional kitchens, is completely unheard of.

But for Blutstein, who worked at East by Northeast in 2014 and 2015 with his now-wife, returning to this restaurant is like returning to an earlier part of his life, as a different, more complete version of himself. “So much is different and yet so much is the same, and it’s just so funny, because its transformation kind of mirrors my life,” he says. “I’m so much the same in so many ways, but so much is different. I have a 2-year-old daughter, and we bought a house in Springs. We’re still making a go of it out here.”

There is also, he says, a sense of fulfillment in seeing this space, where he worked nearly a decade ago, realize its full potential. “Seeing what could have been, and what was always talked about,” he says. “It’s fun. It’s exciting.”

As for life on the actual line, Blutstein cannot say whether or not he will be in restaurants forever. But he does seem to view his return to the back of the house with maturity and reflection. “I think the only thing that is a permanent condition in my life is my family. It’s a crazy world,” he says. “I think a constant is definitely restaurants. I have the bug.”

And, he says, the food outweighs all of the rest of it, no matter where he ends up in the end. “I think the food is the most important part of it,” he says. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to be done in a restaurant, or it has to be done in a home. But done in a restaurant is more me, and that’s kind of who I am.”

For now, Blutstein views himself as a restaurant chef, albeit one who has taken a small detour. He is itching to get back on the line.

I remind him, in words not appropriate for this magazine, of how challenging his first night of service will be after a hiatus, common restaurant hazing among two veterans who have been out of service for a while.

“There’s plenty of pitchers that go out for Tommy John Surgery, and they come back two years later, looking [expletive deleted] Verlander,” he says — a reference to the Cy Young Award-winning Houston Astro pitcher Justin Verlander, who had the surgery and returned to pitch epic seasons.

Blutstein is right, of course. He’ll be just fine.