Kate Williams is a chef and restaurateur in

Detroit Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...

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, US. She was chef and restaurateur for Lady of the House in Detroit's Corktown neighborhood. In 2018 '' Food + Wine'' named her one of America's best new chefs and '' GQ'' and ''Esquire'' named the restaurant to their lists of best new restaurants. Lady of the House closed in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Early life

Williams was born in 1985 in Detroit to parents who were also from Detroit. She studied food science at

Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State or MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan, United States. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State o ...

. She received a culinary degree from the

French Culinary Institute The International Culinary Center (originally known as the French Culinary Institute) was a private for-profit culinary school from 1984 to 2020 headquartered in New York City, New York. The facilities included professional kitchens for hands- ...

Career

Williams served as sous chef for

Wolfgang Puck Wolfgang Johannes Puck (born July 8, 1949) is an Austrian chef and restaurateur. Early life Puck was born in Sankt Veit an der Glan, Austria. He learned cooking from his mother, who was a pastry chef. He took the surname of his stepfather, Jos ...

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and worked in restaurants in New York and at in

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. She was living in

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and working in restaurants when she came home to attend a funeral and "decided this is the only place I want to have a restaurant". She returned to Detroit and helped open Republic Tavern and Parks & Rec Diner, serving as Executive Chef for Republic and Rodin before opening Lady of the House.

Lady of the House

The restaurant opened in September 2017 in Detroit's Corktown neighborhood in a 1970s building that was previously home to St. Cece's, an Irish pub. It is open Tuesday through Sunday for dinner and, since February 2018, on Saturday and Sunday for brunch. Some of the dinnerware had belonged to Williams' grandmother. Childhood photos of restaurant employees hang in a hallway. According to '' Food + Wine'' it is a "no-waste kitchen". Williams uses trim from prime rib to make tartare. Diners are sometimes disappointed when a dish they've read about is unavailable due to the seasonal nature of Williams' menu. One of Williams' signature dishes is a "carrot steak", a large carrot shaved into thin slices, salted, rolled into a rosette, and basted in butter. It requires large carrots, so is available only at times of year when local farmers are producing them. Williams' initial vision was to build a neighborhood restaurant "that feels like it's been there forever". She wanted a restaurant "small enough that I am cooking every day and not just doing paperwork". The restaurant closed in 2021 during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

Recognition

In 2018 ''Food + Wine'' named her one of America's best new chefs, one of only three Michigan chefs since the magazine started the list. The same year, ''GQ'' and ''Esquire'' named the restaurant to their lists of the year's best new restaurants. The restaurant was a semifinalist for the

James Beard Foundation Award The James Beard Foundation Awards are annual awards presented by the James Beard Foundation to recognize chefs, restaurateurs, authors and journalists in the United States. They are scheduled around James Beard's May 5 birthday. The media awar ...

for best new restaurant in the country. In 2019 she was a semifinalist for a James Beard Foundation Award for best chef in the

Great Lakes The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes spanning the Canada–United States border. The five lakes are Lake Superior, Superior, Lake Michigan, Michigan, Lake Huron, H ...

. Industry journal ''Restaurant Hospitality'' called her "the poster child for Detroit's rising food scene". ''The Chicago Tribune'' said her food showed "pure mastery". ''The New York Times'' called it "seasonal-voluptuous".

Philanthropy

Williams works with Alternatives for Girls, which helps homeless and at-risk girls and young women. She teaches cooking classes on preparing inexpensive, healthy meals.

Personal life

Williams has lived in Corktown since 2014. She has family connections to Corktown and Detroit. Her paternal grandfather once lived a few blocks from the restaurant's location. Her maternal grandparents met at the Gaelic League, located around the corner. A great-great-grandfather ran a bakery in Detroit's

West Village The West Village is a neighborhood in the western section of the larger Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City. The West Village is bounded by the Hudson River to the west and 14th Street (Manhattan), 14th Street to ...

neighborhood.

References

External links

Lady of the House
{{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, Kate American women chefs American chefs American women restaurateurs American restaurateurs Living people 1980s births Businesspeople from Detroit Michigan State University alumni International Culinary Center alumni 21st-century American businesswomen