The Old-Timer

He became a chef at 13. Ten years later, Flynn McGarry is done being a prodigy.

-  ADAM PLATT

I FIRST MET FLYNN MCGARRY SEVEN YEARS AGO, when the 16-year-old chef from L.A. (who had started cooking for paying customers three years earlier) was peddling $160 tasting menus at a series of endlessly hyped pop-ups. He went on to work in some of Scandinavia's most demanding fine-dining kitchens and returned to the city in 2018 at the age of 19 to open his own restaurant, Gem (116 Forsyth St.), where he served plates of deconstructed lamb and grilled sunchokes. Earlier this year, he expanded with Gem Wine (297 Broome St.), which has become a destination for the Dimes Square set and offers a decidedly more casual spin on McGarry's style: fried soft-shell crabs, peaches with tomatoes, and simple servings of ham or cheese. It's been a long, strange journey from precocious culinary whiz kid to grizzled big-city restaurateur, but the once-restless McGarry appears to have finally settled into something resembling a regular rhythm. "It's funny to look back and see where I had things right," he says, "and where I had so many things wrong."

When I met you, you were still a teenager, so I guess we could call that your "wunderkind era." Your career has seen several different eras since then.

That was one of my first trips to New York. I can't really remember what I cooked that evening. But then, as happens with wunderkinds, you get older and the novelty starts to die off. You stop being a wunderkind and have to start building a career.

My daughter was very impressed, but this grumpy dad described you back then as a diligent young magician who was still working on his bag of tricks.