Devon Quinn had a biology degree and a standing offer to train mine-hunting dolphins for the Navy in San Diego. He turned it down (the water was too cold, the gig was unpaid) and ended up in a kitchen instead. Today he's Chief Culinary Officer of The Paramount Group and the chef behind Michelin-recognized eden. He walks us through the whole arc: training under Jean-Michel Diot, Dale Levitski, and Andrew Zimmerman, running the dining programs at the Art Institute of Chicago alongside Tony Mantuano, and co-founding Paramount Events in 2011. We talk the grit of catering (dragging 3,000 pounds of food over a barb wire fence in a downpour, laying plywood so guests could climb a muddy hill to dinner), the pandemic reset that took his operation from 500 people down to 19 and forced him to rebuild, the biology obsession that has him hunting for land to grow obscure ingredients -- and so much more.
Listen to this episode