Flynn McGarry:Making Not Waiting

Flynn McGarry’s life has defied the traditional notion of time, especially when measured against the slow, hierarchical ascent typical of the restaurant world. From an early age, he dared to dream. Born in Southern California to a photographer father and a writer mother, Flynn grew up immersed in creativity, shaped by long days of surfing, the music of The Beatles, and a deep love of soccer.

But cooking arrived early, less as a passion than as a refuge. As his parents divorced, Flynn grew restless with the monotony of the meals that accompanied that period of change. Not a child inclined to accept repetition, his boredom met his ambition and his drive to create. At just ten, on a trip to the bookstore, Flynn reached for a cookbook from the top shelf: The French Laundry Cookbook by Thomas Keller. Within a year, he had cooked through every recipe, while spending hours scouring the internet, teaching himself molecular gastronomy, knife techniques, and absorbing lessons from the greats on YouTube.

Shortly after his eleventh birthday, Flynn contracted a whooping cough and spent nearly three months at home, much of it watching Iron Chef Japan with his mother, Meg – and the inspiration took root. When he recovered, they hosted his first dinner using recipes from The Le Bernardin Cookbook. A raucous round of applause followed and delighted the young chef. Within a year, Flynn began homeschooling to focus entirely on cooking.

His parents built him a mini kitchen in his bedroom, modeled after Alinea’s in Chicago (but with notably lower counters) and he began running multi-course tasting menus out of his home. What started as a fun diversion for his mother and her friends soon became Eureka, a coveted $160 tasting-menu ticket. In the age of virality, Flynn was labeled a prodigy and rocketed into the spotlight, but he never felt he was giving something up. Childhood, he says, had run its course; ten years felt like enough. Cooking was simply more interesting.

Exposure to professional kitchens followed early. At just twelve, he worked fifteen-hour days, invigorated by the pressure, pace, and clarity of purpose in professional kitchens. By sixteen, he had served stints at Alma, Eleven Madison Park, and Alinea, later followed by Norway’s Maaemo and Denmark’s Geranium. His stint in Copenhagen ultimately inspired his Scandinavian aesthetic that bleeds through all his endeavors – minimalist and simple, yet soul-filled and joyful.

At sixteen and newly graduated, Flynn moved to New York and began working full-time. That same year, he was hired by Dries Van Noten to cook at his summer home in Antwerp, an experience that broadened the scope of his ambitious passions. There, he met guests Barbara and Daniel de Belder, who introduced him to new ways of making. Barbara took him antiquing, sparking Flynn’s “random” collections: baskets, glassware, turn-of-the-century Japanese coffee mugs, small wooden boats, and planes that adorn his home. Daniel taught him woodworking, the passion that, over time, has grown to rival cooking itself. Flynn has built major elements of his home by hand, including the bathtub. If he weren’t a chef, he says, he would be an interior designer.

These pursuits are not separate from food, however. For Flynn, space is essential to experience. The environment shapes how a meal is felt and remembered. His first restaurant, Gem, named for his mother, Meg, was conceived as a place of memory and discovery. In a small East Village wine bar, undeniably threaded with Danish nodes, at nineteen, he sought to recreate the feeling of being thirteen at his mother’s house, hosting friends and family – the warmth, the style, the familiarity – while beginning to find his own voice in the industry. Guests started in a front room with snacks and drinks, then moved together into the dining space. Menus shift subtly from night to night, much like a home-cooked meal. That vision expanded into Gem Home, a space dedicated to ingredients, seasonality, and objects: part café, part bakery, part grocery, part antique collection. At both, Flynn largely built the space and furniture himself.

In the fall of 2025, Flynn opened Cove, marking a new chapter. With blonde-wood walls and furniture, paintings from a friend of his farm plot, and an open kitchen, the space feels intimate yet monumental, reaching toward the restaurants that first inspired him, grounded in his own taste. The atmosphere and food reflect his California roots and Nordic taste. He asked himself, What is New York through the eyes of someone raised in California? Today, his cooking reaches for space, light, and simplicity, delivered with quiet confidence, intended to last.

But even in his rise to stardom and success, Flynn still begins his day at the Union Square Market, assessing the produce and allowing it to inform his choices. He is still thrilled by the pace of the kitchen. He recently renovated and outfitted his entire apartment. Rather than separating work from life, he allows himself to fully submerge and move through it all with a rare calm and attentiveness that feels both deliberate and deeply earned.

For Flynn McGarry, time has never been something to wait for, but to seize.