At twelve he started running a supper club out of his mother’s home in LA’s Studio City, inspired by the recipes of his heroes Thomas Keller and Grant Achatz. Real, first-hand experience followed at Eleven Madison Park, Alinea, Next and Alma, punctuated by a feature in The New Yorker (“Prodigy”), the front cover of The New York Times Magazine’s food and drink issue and a spot in Time magazine’s list of the ‘top 25 most influential teens’. And all this before his eighteenth birthday…
After finishing high school Flynn travelled to Europe to stage at Maemo in Oslo and Geranium in Copenhagen, followed in 2018 by the opening of his highly anticipated debut restaurant in New York’s Lower East Side.
Channelling the vibe of an intimate dinner party among friends, Gem serves multi-course tasting menus of “nuanced and “lyrical” (NY Times) dishes like ‘White Asparagus, Reduced Chicken Jus and Pine Needles’; ‘King Crab, Rose Petal Miso, Chamomile-scented Potatoes and Red Currant’; and ‘Barbecue Lamb Ribs with Cracked Coriander Seed and XO sauce’ that more than justify the hype generated by his namesake documentary Chef Flynn, which premiered at last year’s Sundance film festival.