What's Cooking with Keith Rudolf

If you’ve enjoyed a bite to eat at Styer’s Garden Café, you may have found yourself wondering about the chef who created your meal. Recently, we stopped in to chat with Chef Keith Rudolf, sample some treats, and ask him to make a difficult choice—his favorite dish from the menu.

Keith told us, “I didn’t go to culinary school, I’ve just had the honor of working for some of the best.” At age 21, he landed a job in the kitchen of famed Philly chef Tony Clark, an experience he likens to “culinary boot camp.” He next spent several years in LA at The Standard Hotel before returning to his native East Coast. Three years ago, he joined the terrain family thanks to encouragement from his wife, who brought him to the café and insisted, “You need to be the chef here.”

When asked what he loves about the Garden Café, Keith had a lot to say. First, he enjoys the opportunity to “develop a living menu with the help of local purveyors and farmers.” He added, “We get so many fantastic products, so we’ve been able to adopt a cooking philosophy that allows the ingredients to speak for themselves. We don’t overdo anything and try to respect each product by preparing it correctly and cleanly.” Along with the fantastic kitchen and front of house teams, the space itself makes coming to work even better. “The décor of our greenhouse is something I love about terrain. It is truly a one-of-a-kind dining room, and our visual team does a wonderful job keeping it beautiful.”

Finally, we asked our chef to make a tough call: which dish from the menu was his current favorite? He chose the Venison Rack. “First off,” he said, “the rack itself is a beautiful and delicious thing, but the fact that we’re using oatmeal and making it savory with some root vegetables is a great accompaniment to the lean game meat.” 

To learn more about our cafés or to reserve your table, please visit the Styer's and Westport restaurant pages.

Photography courtesy of Courtney Apple.