Chad Gauss has left the City Cafe. His last night as the Mount Vernon restaurant's executive chef was Saturday.
Gauss will be opening his own restaurant in the old Hampden Food Market. The 3,000 square-foot restaurant, to be named the Food Market, will include seating for 90 in the dining room, a 12-seat bar and an open kitchen whose focus, Gauss said, will be "basically blue-collar food in a white-collar execution."
Gauss's partner in the Food Market is Elan Kotz, a familiar front-of-house presence at Aldo's in Little Italy. Gauss will be the Food Market's executive chef and Kotz its general manager. Gauss says he hopes to have the Food Market, which is now in "deep construction," open by the third week of April.
About his City Cafe employers, Gauss had this to say: "They're the best employers of chefs in the city." No word yet about City Cafe's post-Gauss plans.
