Chad Gauss, the former executive chef at City Cafe who left in 2012 to open his own restaurant in Hampden, has returned to the Mt. Vernon restaurant.
Gauss remains the owner and executive chef at The Food Market. Gauss said he also plans to spend most of his workweek at the Hamdpen restaurant, which opened in June 2012, during HonFest.
James Jennings, recently, the chef de cuisine at The Food Market, has moved full-time to City Cafe, where he will be running the kitchen.
Gauss said the new City Cafe menu, which debuts on Friday, is a full collaboration between Jennings and himself. The new menu is a complete overhaul of the previous City Cafe menu, with no holdover items from the most recent menu. A few new menu items, like the Chicken Fun salad, are from Gauss's old City Cafe menu but haven't been served there since he left.
Except for one or two items, the new City Cafe menu and current Food Market menu are almost entirely different.
Gauss said that he left City Cafe on good terms with its owners, Gino Cardinale and Bruce Bodie.
"We always had a little unfinished business," said Gauss about his return to City Cafe, where he has entered into a business partnership with Cardinale and Bodie. "We put City Cafe on the map in some of the hardest years of a recession. As far as we went, there were was so much more room to grow."
"We want City Cafe, and have always wanted it, to be the best that it can be," Cardinale said. "And we think it was never better than the three years when Chad [was] executive chef. We feel that people are going to love the new menu. They might miss some of the old favorites, but there's awesome food replacing it, and it's keeping us moving forward."
"If they want the old menu," Gauss said, "they can call us for a private party."
Gauss said the success of The Food Market, and his trust its current kitchen staff allowed him to start thinking about other challenges. "All the stars were aligning for this to happen."
Gauss said there are no plans for any changes at The Food Market.