CHEF CONVERSATIONS

BY ALISON BAILIN BATZ / PHOTO BY DEBBY WOLVOS

Kelly Fletcher is the executive chef of Virtù Honest Craft, where he is taking a modern, global approach to his evolving menu of Mediterranean fare.

Tell us about the menu at Virtù. We have a three-course prix fixe menu with supplements that lets guests choose from all of our best dishes as well as a la carte offerings. We play and tinker with the menu daily, but there are always mind-bending pastas, prime meats, ultrafresh seafood, and whimsical touches like foie gras candy.

When did you start cooking?

My mom was an avid hunter, and when I was 10 years old, she brought in two rabbits that she nabbed during a hunt, challenging me to prepare and cook one, and she would do the same with the other. It sounds wild, but the entire process piqued something. By my early 20s, I made the decision to enter Scottsdale Culinary Institute and never looked back.

Tell us about your culinary journey. I’ve been everywhere including House of Tricks, Zen Culinary, El Chorro, Tuck Shop, and Genuine Concepts before joining Virtù earlier this year. Along the way, I made lifelong friends – especially the Seven Chefs – survived a coma and open-heart surgery and got sober. I just celebrated two years, in fact.

We are a group of longtime friends and chefs. The initial seven – Cullen Campbell, Joshua Hebert, Scott Holmes, Stephen Jones, Bernie Kantak, Virtù Founder Gio Osso, and me –made national headlines when we collectively cooked for the James Beard House in 2015. Since then, we have added others and hosted dinners as part of the Devour Culinary Classic and for charity.

What is the best piece of cooking advice you have ever received?

I mentored under a French chef who firmly believed that if you served identical perfectly cooked steaks to a table, in a taste test the steak with the best sauce would always win. This motivated me to become a saucier to kick everything I do up a notch.

Virtù Honest Craft, 3701 N. Marshall Way, Scottsdale; www.virtuhonestcraft.com; 480.946-3477.