Camille Cogswell of K’Far is named one of Food & Wine’s best new chefs
Add it to the other awards, including the James Beard for rising star chef she received in 2018.
She’s won a James Beard Award and was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, and now Camille Cogswell is one of Food & Wine’s best new chefs, announced Tuesday.
Cogswell, 29, executive chef at K’Far, the acclaimed all-day Israeli cafe near Rittenhouse Square owned by Zahav’s Mike Solomonov and Steve Cook, is the city’s first F&W winner since Eli Kulp got the nod in 2014.
The category is open to chefs who have led a kitchen for five years or less.
Though Cogswell has led a pastry department for four years — and won the 2018 Beard Award for rising star chef (after having been nominated for the same award in 2017) — she has been an executive chef only since K’Far’s opening July 29, 2019. She also is Zahav’s executive pastry chef.
“All I can do try to keep doing what I’ve been doing,” said Cogswell, who grew up in Asheville, N.C., and graduated from the Culinary Institute of America. She began as a pastry cook at Zahav in late 2015. Two months after starting, she was asked to take on managing the pastry operation.
Lately during the dining room shutdown, she has been overseeing meal pickups at K’Far once a week and helping other restaurants in the CookNSolo empire.
The Food & Wine article explains that “K’Far might be a Hebrew term, but Cogswell emphasizes that the menu is not ‘religiously affiliated.’ Instead, she is looking to celebrate the cuisines of the region, making her K’Far a place of acceptance and good food.”
Besides Kulp, other F&W best new chefs from Philadelphia have included Karen Nicolas (2012), Jim Burke (2008), Dominique Filoni (2004), Marc Vetri (1999), Guillermo Pernot (1998), Tony Clark (1997), Jack McDavid (1991), Francesco Martorella and Bruce Lim (1990), and Susanna Foo (1989).