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D.C.-based chef and restaurateur Ryan Ratino plans to grow his business from two locations to five next year

A restaurant and cocktail bar are planned for Washington’s wharf, and an oceanfront seafood restaurant is in the works in Fort Lauderdale., Fla.

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

November 30, 2022

 

At age 32, Ryan Ratino already has two Michelin-starred restaurants. Bresca, a “Bistronomy” style restaurant offering fine-dining food in a casual setting in Washington D.C., has a Michelin star, and its upstairs neighbor, Jônt, is a 15-seat 20-course tasting-menu extravaganza that has two Michelin stars. But that’s not enough. The chef is working on a 34-seat restaurant in the city’s Wharf district that will be an homage to the cuisines of chefs such as Joël Robuchon, Paul Bocuse, and Alain Ducasse, plus all the trappings of the grand European restaurants of yesteryear, but with up-to-date music, “maybe a little bit too loud … but that’s what we do,” Ratino said.

That restaurant will be attached to a high-end cocktail bar the chef said he hopes will be a beverage-version of Jônt.

Both of those as-yet-unnamed venues are slated to open in late summer or early fall of next year, as is another restaurant, also without a name so far, at the Four Seasons Hotel and Residences Fort Lauderdale.

The Florida restaurant will feature straightforward but high-end seafood.

The native of Medina, Ohio, attended Le Cordon Bleu in Orlando, Fla., and worked in that city after graduation, including three years under Todd English at Bluezoo, before moving to New York and working at WD-50 under Wylie Dufresne and Dovetail under John Fraser.

In D.C., he worked at José Andrés’s Minibar, as well as Ripple and Masa 14, plus at L’Auberge Provençale in White Post, Va.

Ratino recently discussed his upcoming projects.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] 

About the Author

Bret Thorn

Senior Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News

Senior Food & Beverage Editor

Bret Thorn is senior food & beverage editor for Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality for Informa’s Restaurants and Food Group, with responsibility for spotting and reporting on food and beverage trends across the country for both publications as well as guiding overall F&B coverage. 

He is the host of a podcast, In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn, which features interviews with chefs, food & beverage authorities and other experts in foodservice operations.

From 2005 to 2008 he also wrote the Kitchen Dish column for The New York Sun, covering restaurant openings and chefs’ career moves in New York City.

He joined Nation’s Restaurant News in 1999 after spending about five years in Thailand, where he wrote articles about business, banking and finance as well as restaurant reviews and food columns for Manager magazine and Asia Times newspaper. He joined Restaurant Hospitality’s staff in 2016 while retaining his position at NRN. 

A magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in history, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Thorn also studied traditional French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He spent his junior year of college in China, studying Chinese language, history and culture for a semester each at Nanjing University and Beijing University. While in Beijing, he also worked for ABC News during the protests and ultimate crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thorn’s monthly column in Nation’s Restaurant News won the 2006 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for best staff-written editorial or opinion column.

He served as president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, in 2005.

Thorn wrote the entry on comfort food in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd edition, published in 2012. He also wrote a history of plated desserts for the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, published in 2015.

He was inducted into the Disciples d’Escoffier in 2014.

A Colorado native originally from Denver, Thorn lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Bret Thorn’s areas of expertise include food and beverage trends in restaurants, French cuisine, the cuisines of Asia in general and Thailand in particular, restaurant operations and service trends. 

Bret Thorn’s Experience: 

Nation’s Restaurant News, food & beverage editor, 1999-Present
New York Sun, columnist, 2005-2008 
Asia Times, sub editor, 1995-1997
Manager magazine, senior editor and restaurant critic, 1992-1997
ABC News, runner, May-July, 1989

Education:
Tufts University, BA in history, 1990
Peking University, studied Chinese language, spring, 1989
Nanjing University, studied Chinese language and culture, fall, 1988 
Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, Cértificat Elémentaire, 1986

Email: [email protected]

Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-thorn-468b663/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bret.thorn.52
Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
Instagram: @foodwriterdiary

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