“It’s much quieter, a little more chill,” says Conley, who has no formal culinary training and honed his skills on the job. A mailbox store adjacent to Buccan went out of business, and in 2012, Imoto, which means little sister in Japanese, was born. Buccan is loud, casual and focused on what emanates from the brick oven. The first menu, he says, was huge and cheap, with items like short rib empanadas, steak tartare and squid ink orecchiette, a New American style not unlike what is served today. Piper, who lives in Palm Beach, said, ‘Why don’t you come up for the weekend and check out this place?’” We’d looked in Boston and Colorado and had a couple close calls in Miami. “My partners Sam Slattery and Piper Quinn, we’d always had this casual wood-grill, small-plates concept. It worked, and he helmed the restaurant for five years before opening Buccan, which many folks credit with kick-starting a Palm Beach dining revolution, in 2011. I was a young chef, putting a lot of stuff on the plates. I made a study in tuna three ways, a wild mushroom consomme with shaved white truffles and a roasted mushroom salad, a bouillabaisse with grouper and a Moroccan lamb, again with three preparations.
Grato baked pasta delight Photography by Libby Volgyes He stayed with English for 10 years, opening more than 20 restaurants and eventually becoming corporate culinary director-a prestigious gig, but one that is more administrative than it is culinary.Ĭonley aimed to change that, auditioning for chef de cuisine of what would be Miami’s first AAA Five Diamond restaurant, Azul. English gave him a shot making salads and risottos at Figs down the street. He set his sights on Olives, English’s upscale Mediterranean flagship, but by Conley’s own admission, he was too young for the job. Two things were perhaps more predictive of his success: He started washing dishes in a restaurant at age 14, and, after dropping out of college following stints at Tulane and then at Florida State, he moved to Boston to work for superstar chef Todd English. Being the chef behind Buccan, The Sandwich Shop, Imoto and Grato, he was a James Beard semifinalist in 2012, 2013, 20. His upbringing may not have set things in motion for Conley, now 44, to be the chef and owner of a raft of award-winning restaurants in Palm Beach County. His mother, a Czech-American school teacher, was a good home cook, and his systems analyst father spent his off hours tending to 2,000 fruit trees on the property, along with pigs, sheep and other delicious critters. Still, it’s clear his childhood influenced him. Despite his origins, he can’t come up with a single rhyming limerick, dirty or otherwise. Photography by Libby VolgyesĬlay Conley grew up in Limerick, Maine, a tiny town in the foothills of the White Mountains. Chef Clay Conley was a James Beard semifinalist in 2012, 2013, 20.