On a sunny late-summer afternoon in Peconic, Adam Kaufer pulls up to Chronicle Wines in his Mustang SUV and hops out. He isn’t here for a wine tasting, though; the tall, smiling chef is here to work — and, if all goes as it usually does, wow. Kaufer opens the hatch and grabs a giant vat of clam chowder — made from locally sourced clams, of course, from purveyors like Braun Seafood and Jermaine Owens — as well as trays of prepared cocktail shrimp and salmon tartare. As he sets up his station right outside the tasting room, guests clock that there’s something tasty and begin lining up to try Kaufer’s creations.
It’s just one of the many projects that Kaufer takes on via Grace & Grit (55750 Main Road, Southold), his constantly booked and ever-evolving catering company that he runs with business partner Jennilee Morris. But instead of seeming exhausted by the relentless schedule and on-your-feet demands of the crowd-pleasing job, Kaufer’s demeanor is consistently upbeat, drawing energy from the creativity involved in every project, whether he’s crafting the menu for a large-scale catering job, hosting an intimate chef’s supper, staffing a huge party in need of waiters and bussers, or working in the kitchen preparing his popular off-season pop-up takeout series.
It takes a lot to do what Kaufer does, and to do it well takes a bit of grace — and a whole lot of grit.
design & determination
Kaufer isn’t just a prolific chef; he’s an exploratory one, too, who manages to successfully combine his love for what’s hyperlocal with the joy of travel through tastebuds. That innate sky’s-the-limit creativity was forged not in the kitchen, though, but in the design world.
He grew up in Rockville Centre and attended the BOCES Cultural Arts Center, now known as the Long Island High School for the Arts, in Syosset before getting a degree in jewelry and light metals from the Rhode Island School of Design.
“Growing up, my mother did not cook. But she was really good at making reservations. We ate at restaurants a lot and I really liked restaurant food,” Kaufer says. “When I was in art school, I was like, ‘Well, I can’t afford to go to restaurants!’ So I started teaching myself to cook at RISD.”
He approached the kitchen with an artist’s point of view, thinking about color, texture, brightness, and contrast. The way aromatics can both tease and taunt your senses with the most wonderful kind of give and take before that first bite brings it all together. To earn a living, though, he landed a job after college designing sunglasses on Long Island.
Several years in, he was living in Southold and got laid off when his company was acquired by another group. Tasked with figuring out his next move, it was then that a chance dinner with friends changed his life.
Winemaker Regan Meador and his wife, Carey, of the former Southold Farm & Cellar, invited Kaufer to a potluck dinner at their home one evening, along with Tom Hart of Deep Roots Farm and Jennilee Morris, co-founder of North Fork Roasting Company and Grace & Grit, then a fledgling catering operation that launched in 2012. Kaufer smoked a couple chickens to contribute to the meal, which caught the immediate attention of Morris.
“Jennilee was like, ‘Who made this?’” laughs Kaufer. “I didn’t know her at the time at all. And she said, ‘Do you want a job?’ This was a month or two after not working, so I was like, sure! I’ll take a job.” Without hesitation, Kaufer jumped right in.
“I just remember being like, this is the best chicken I’ve ever had. Ever,” says Morris of that fateful dinner party. “Just on a whim, I was like, would you ever want to do some freelancing? The next day he showed up with knives and two years later, he became my partner.”
It only took a few months for Kaufer to discover that cooking was his true passion. He also leveraged his ability to organize and manage, finding methods to make the catering jobs go more smoothly, all the while keeping things fresh and unexpected through experimentation on creative dishes that helped build and cement Grace & Grit’s reputation. Within two years of working in the kitchen, he became Morris’s business partner.
“He had an incredible amount of creativity, and just raw talent,” says Morris. “Like, he’s willing to try anything, but also, sometimes chefs can be held back by what you’re ‘supposed’ to do, and I find that he’s willing to stretch that and take chances on things.”
But while creativity and practicality don’t always find common ground, Kaufer also has a head for the planning side of the business, and is naturally able to scale menus up or down depending on the size of an event.
“To do that for 150 people and serve it hot takes a different set of skills,” says Morris.
wisdom & wine
Robin Epperson-McCarthy of Chronicle Wines — a collective featuring several wine labels under the creation of winemakers Epperson-McCarthy and Alie Shaper — first befriended Kaufer while working for Grace & Grit and moonlighting as a bartender for their events. She’d just launched her own wine label, Saltbird Cellars, and forged a partnership with fellow winemaker Shaper to take over the convivial tasting room formerly run by Anthony and Sara Nappa on Peconic Lane.
“Adam would come in to play guitar with [tasting room manager] Derek Gerard,” Epperson-McCarthy recalls.
“They were jammin’ out to yacht rock,” laughs Shaper.
They forged a friendship and soon after, when Epperson-McCarthy and Shaper were looking to add more fun events to their wine club and tasting room, invited Kaufer to collaborate with them on inspired wine and food pairing tastings and dinners.
“What I’ve always enjoyed about Adam’s cooking is that he’s got a great take on classics with his own twist,” says Shaper. “You recognize what the food is, but it’s got Adam’s je ne sais quoi. It’s not overworked or over-fancy. It’s just really thoughtful and put-together. With his style, less is more, but he picks all the right things.”
Epperson-McCarthy believes that Kaufer’s background in design helps him come up with such creative foods.
“He’s got that engineering brain,” she says. “It’s perfect for what Adam does for food. He recognizes the basic components and then says, ‘How can I put a spin on it? How can I design it? How can I make it unique and different?’ That’s why he’s able to put on these massive catering events where hundreds of people are eating duck breast. It’s cooked perfectly, and this is how you do a reduction or give it some flair. He studies the food.”
local & lovely
Though he was raised in Rockville Centre, Kaufer spent a lot of time on the North Fork growing up, and felt drawn to it as an adult. Having been a full-timer in Southold since 2003, Kaufer likes to source as locally as possible, both when it comes to food and staffing.
“In general, I get everything I possibly can from Deep Roots Farm,” says Kaufer. “We take care of them, they take care of us.”
He also found love with a local.
“I was at Tony’s Asian Fusion in Mattituck,” says Melanie Mott, a former Strawberry Queen to whom Kaufer recently proposed marriage with a ring he designed himself (she said yes). “Adam came in for takeout and sat down next to me at the bar and he was there for, like, an extra hour. It was effortless and easy. Then he messaged me from the parking lot asking if I’d like to go out — that was 10-and-a-half years ago.”
Today, Mott does social media for Grace & Grit, and pinch-hits when there’s a need for servers or an extra set of hands.
“I knew he loved to cook. He was always very good at it,” she says. “When he figured out he could do this for a living, it made the [career change] a no-brainer. I’m extremely proud of him and I know how hard he works. He puts his heart and soul into everything he does and it shows.”
takeout & twists
On weekends during the colder months, Kaufer’s pop-up takeout series becomes a winter love letter to locals, in part thanks to the variety of foods on offer. Each week, Kaufer plans a different to-go menu, which includes mainstays like burgers, but also cuisine not usually found on the North Fork, like Indian, Thai and Korean barbecue.
“During COVID, we really had to pivot because there were no parties,” says Kaufer. “After COVID was done, we got more requests. We still do the burger pop-up once a year. We do the mac and cheese pop-up.”
One of the more popular pop-ups Kaufer offers is the Indian menu.
“Indian is interesting to me. There’s no Indian [restaurants] here,” he says. “That’s kind of a mystery to me. Most of the ingredients you’d find in Mexican food! It’s just the combinations and techniques [that are different].”
Shaper and Epperson-McCarthy also work with Kaufer on small, intimate wine pairing suppers held at Grace & Grit and at their tasting room. While the dinners offer high-end fare — think roasted rack of venison, strip steak with chimichurri, grilled feta with mint and pistachio pesto — paired with Chronicle wines (and sometimes wines from other labels, as well), they’re friendly, warm experiences, filled with conversation and occasional but very charming interruptions to briefly explain the ingredients and parings.
“We’re all going to walk through this together,” Kaufer says. “Some of it may work and some of it might not. Something might be magical. It’s always fun to live on the edge like that.”
