“I get to learn from these chefs and experience all of these different places, but I don’t have to pay a lot of money for it,” McGarry said. At the same time, he’s a willing participant in it; he told me he was convinced that self-promotion — whether it’s a show or a magazine article — was an integral part of being a creative person nowadays. “You can’t really do anything without selling out, to an extent,” he says. “We don’t see it ending anytime soon,” the self-taught teen chef told The Post Tuesday. I want to meet these chefs. Then again, “now that I think about it,” he says, “time moves very quickly for me, so it’s not that far away. “I know people are always like, ‘You shouldn’t mark what you want by someone else’s [standards]’ — like three Michelin stars or four New York Times stars — but it’s kind of like a goal to look up to. And he wants us to get our heads back into the clouds and take inspiration from the world of science fiction.
– You probably wouldn't pay $160 to have any 16-year-old cook you dinner, but you might if the teen in the chef's hat is Flynn McGarry. The self-taught chef and recent high school graduate's first New York City restaurant, Eureka, opens Saturday, the New York Post reports. It won't be easy to get in, and not just because there are only 12 seats in the place. Flynn has an impressive résumé for one so young, reports Food & Wine. His California supper club—also named Eureka after the street on which he used to live—landed his face on the cover of the New York Times Magazine at 15, and he's since worked at elite restaurants Maeemo in Norway and Geranium in Denmark. He also has a TED Talk under his belt and recently met Martha Stewart. At his pop-up counter restaurant on a corner in the West Village, he'll serve 14-course tasting menus with a $160 price tag three nights a week. Among the dishes that may make the cut: seawater-brined sea urchin with carrot cremeaux and coffee-pickled carrots; a beet dish involving fermented beet butter; a tomato-lobster dumpling in rose-hips tea; and his signature peanut Ritz crackers with foie gras terrine and sour cherry compote. "Peanut butter and Ritz is everyone's favorite snack," Flynn tells Food & Wine, but that doesn't mean he loves making the dish. The crackers are "fun, but a pain in the ass. I make the ridges on each cracker with a toothpick," he says. The Eureka website has already crashed once, and reservations are sold out through mid-October. Flynn's very 16-year-old advice on Twitter, "Everyone needs to chiiiiiiiiiiilllllllllll out..."