Art of Food's Meet The Chef: Jason Kallert, Chef at American Cut

I'm a corporate chef for LDV Hospitality—we have 23 brands and almost 40 stores up and down the east coast—from Puerto Rico and Miami to New York. I help open these restaurants, and write the menus in conjunction with the chefs. We're expanding pretty quickly: we've opened 12 and a half stores in the last year.

I've been cooking since I was really young. I grew up with my grandparents in New Jersey, just on the other side of the Hudson, and while my grandfather worked, I cooked with my grandmother every day. She definitely inspired me.

My jobs have always been in restaurants. I started working when I was 13, just bussing tables and doing dishes, whatever they would let me do.

I graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in '97, and have been working in Manhattan ever since.

I worked in French restaurants all of my life. The basics of cooking, I believe, come from French cooking. It provides this great base of knowledge, and from there, you can move into any genre.

American cut is all about the steak, but we take a lot of pride in every single component of the dish—a lot of restaurants end up with bland potatoes and vegetables as their sides. We're not like that.

To find out more or to buy tickets to Art of Food 2017, go to artoffoodny.com.