Celebrated New Orleans Chef and 2016 James Beard Award Recipient for “Best New Restaurant-Shaya”

READING, PA – BlueStar®, manufacturer of high-performance, customizable appliances for the home, is pleased to introduce its newest All-Star Chef, Alon Shaya, Executive Chef and Partner of Domenica, Pizza Domenica and Shaya. Chef Shaya is continuously recognized for his contributions to the New Orleans restaurant scene, including his most recent James Beard Award for “Best New Restaurant – Shaya”.

Chef Alon Shaya joins the exclusive BlueStar® All-Star lineup which includes culinary luminaries Michael Symon and Marc Vetri, among others, who strive to match the performance of their restaurant kitchens at home.  For this reason they chose to customize their home kitchens with high-performance BlueStar® products.

To match both his individual cooking and design style, Chef Shaya chose a BlueStar® 48” Platinum Range in Infused Copper with matching knobs as well as a 52” Hood Liner for his new home. The top-of-the-line Platinum series features 25,000 BTU PrimaNova™ Burners, a precise simmer burner and an interchangeable griddle charbroiler.

“We did a lot of white marble and dark blue kitchen cabinets throughout our kitchen with copper light fixtures,” said Shaya. “We thought the copper colored BlueStar range would complement the rest of our kitchen and also act as a centerpiece that our friends and family can see from several other rooms in the house.”

The world-class chef loves having a BlueStar® gas range because, he said, “I can cook at home with the same power that I use at my restaurants. The BTUs are unstoppable and I have the freedom to create any menu without feeling limited by my cooking power. My favorite feature is being able to use all eight burners at once when I need to, or add on the grill and griddle when I want to add some more diversity to my menus.”

Shaya’s favorite recipe to make at home is hummus with tahini. “It is the perfect comfort food to me. It reminds me of my family, my friends and now my restaurant.”  Though his favorite recipe is easy enough for anyone to make, Shaya is excited to put his new kitchen to the test. “I really look forward to roasting a whole porchetta in the huge oven just as I do for special events at my restaurant Domenica. I will pair that up with some crispy cast iron seared potatoes on the stovetop with sage and sea salt. Meanwhile, in the smaller oven, I want to bake some blueberry and almond tarts for dessert.”

Shaya has been in the kitchen since a young age, cooking with his mother and grandmother in Philadelphia where he was raised. He grew up to train at the Culinary Institute of America, and worked at Antonio’s Ristorante in St. Louis. In 2009, Alon, along with the Besh Restaurant Group, formed a partnership to open Domenica, a regional Italian restaurant in the New Orleans Historic Roosevelt Hotel.  The restaurant has been included in prestigious epicurean publications such as Bon Appétit, Food & Wine and Food52.  Alon was named one of the “50 people changing the South” by Southern Living Magazine in 2015.

In 2015, Shaya was awarded a coveted James Beard Foundation Award, in the “Best Chef –South” category as well as named one of “50 Most Influential American Jews in America” by The Forward.

After several visits to Israel, Shaya was inspired to return to his cooking roots and in February of 2015, he opened his namesake Israeli restaurant. Shaya is an innovative restaurant with a warm and welcoming approach to the dining culture inspired by Chef Alon Shaya’s Israeli upbringing and New Orleans’ local ingredients. Esquire named Shaya “The Best New Restaurant in America” in 2015 and Chef Shaya was awarded his second James Beard Award in May of 2016 for “Best New Restaurant”.