Tom Valenti, a pioneering North Jersey chef who helped guide the New York City dining scene after 9/11 and helmed some of the most heralded and popular restaurants in North Jersey and New York, died on April 1. He was 67 years old.
Valenti lived in Byram Township and was executive chef at Jockey Hollow in Morristown before its abrupt closure early last year. Before that, he was the executive chef at the Oxbow Tavern on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, at the illustrious Midtown spot Le Cirque and co-owner/executive chef at Ouest Restaurant on the Upper West Side, among others.
Valenti grew up in Ithaca, New York, taking a job in a local French restaurant after graduating high school, working pastry and getting introduced to the Escoffier style of refined French cooking. He soon got a job at a restaurant in Greenwich, Connecticut, run by the French chef Guy Savoy, who was so impressed by Valenti’s cooking that Savoy sent him to his flagship Paris restaurant, where he worked for four months.
Chef Tom Valenti at Jockey Hollow Bar & Kitchen on Tuesday, May 2, 2023.
After he returned to the U.S., Valenti became sous chef at Gotham Bar and Grill in Greenwich Village and then opened Allison on Dominick with his colleague at Gotham, Allison Price. It was there that he started to get recognition in the culinary world; David Burke, in a post remembering Valenti, said he “made the best lamb shanks in America.”
Burke met Valenti in New York City culinary circles in the late ’80s. He remembered Valenti then, and beyond, as a “sweet guy [who was] very, very, very funny.”
“He always smiled, didn’t carry problems around and, boy, could he cook,” Burke said. “He cooked really sexy, simple food. He used ingredients like skate; nobody cooked skate back then. … He made a lot of wonderful food that chefs wanted to eat.”
Chef Andrew Zimmern, in a social media post, said after dining at Allison on Dominick in the ’80s with fellow chefs that they were left with the feeling “we had a lot to learn if we were going to approach Tom’s skill set.”
Of the lamb shank and his evolution as a chef, Valenti told the New York Times in 2003: “At that point, I had gone through the Gotham school of cooking and I had cooked in Paris, which was very light sauces, super clean and pure. I wanted to get back to that big pot of stew and love I remembered, and lamb shank was one of those el cheapo cuts that ended up in Nonni’s sauce.”
In addition to the lamb shanks, Valenti is remembered for his low-salt salmon gravlax. Valenti’s cooking style evolved when he opened Ouest in 2001, a spot that was credited with bringing haute cuisine to the Upper West Side, but still a focus on using lesser cuts of meats. His work there landed him the cover of “New York Magazine.”
Zimmern remembered Valenti as more than just an excellent chef, though, a sentiment that was echoed by other accomplished chefs such as Amanda Freitag, Ming Tsai, Michael Symon and others.
“We lost one of the best people I’ve ever known,” Zimmern wrote. “The fact that he was also one of the most influential chefs of his generation was the tip of the iceberg with Tom Valenti. His food was exquisite whether he was doing a rustic bowl of tortellini en brodo, or the most complex and intricate of platings, he could do it all. His laugh, his brilliant mind, his teaching ability, and his intense focus either at work or catching up on the phone were things I will never forget about him.”
After the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Valenti co-organized the Windows of Hope Family Relief Fund, which helped support surviving family members of food service workers who died. They set a date to dine out around New York City to raise funds, but the idea spread nationwide, corporate sponsors joined in and, in total, the group raised over $23 million for 125 families. Valenti also helped raise funds for families in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Valenti’s legacy includes the memories of his cooking, kindness and personality but also three cookbooks, plenty of recipes online, and many awards, including Food & Wine Magazine’s best new chef in 1990, two James Beard Award nominations and several New York Magazine nods.
He spent the latter years of his career at Jockey Hollow; he brought a lifetime of experience to the role.
“I will use a simple approach, sensible combinations,” he told NorthJersey.com in 2022. “I like designing menus where, if you want to get fancy, you can do that, if you want it simple, you can do that too. Sure sometimes you want a chef-composed kind of dish, but sometimes you just want roast chicken.”
“It’s a very competitive field we’re in, and he just wanted to cook and have fun and love the lifestyle. He loved what he did,” Burke said. “He walked to his own beat, and he did it well.”
Matt Cortina is a food reporter with NorthJersey.com/The Record. Reach him at mcortina@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Tom Valenti, of Jockey Hollow and several top NYC spots, dies
Dining and Cooking