Scott Burnett
Partner, CoExecutive Chef Kampuchea Restaurant
Scott Garrett Burnett of Ocala, Florida never imagined that one day he would end up in New York City, pioneering new dishes in a very ethnic cuisine.
Scott Burnett is currently the Partner and CoExecutive Chef of Kampuchea Restaurant (78 Rivington Street, New York, NY 10002, 2125293901), the only Cambodian restaurant in New York City. Burnett helped to design and execute a modern Cambodian menu that very quickly captivated the hearts and stomachs of culinarysavvy New Yorkers.
Burnett grew up around food and the restaurant industry, and no matter how much he tried to escape it as he explored other things, his life always brought him back to food. He was born with an instinct for food in his blood; his father was a restaurant manager, his mother worked alongside him, and together the family owned and managed several casual American restaurants in Florida. Burnett spent much of his time growing up in restaurants, getting paid to do dishes or other work in the back of the house since he was a young boy. Even as a youth, something about the sensibility of restaurants captured him—"I liked how it was regimented, clean, organized, fastpaced. It made sense to me," says Burnett.
Eventually, Burnett left the family business to explore his own path—for a while, he did local farm work, working on tractors, cleaning stalls, and raising cattle for livestock shows. Then in 2001 he attended fire college to pursue being a firefighter. Before he finished his certification, however, he realized that his real dream was one that had been with him all along, and he hadn't seen it until he had been away from it - he wanted a career in professional cooking.
At the age of 20, Burnett moved to New Hampshire to attend the Atlantic Culinary Academy, or Le Cordon Bleu culinary school. During his time at Le Cordon Bleu, he met his mentor, Chef/Owner David Robinson of the Wellington Room in Portsmouth. Scott spent two years at the Wellington Room, where he specialized in American and New Zealand cuisine.
In November of 2005, Burnett relocated to New York City. From a referral by his college roommate, Burnett took a position as a cook in one of the city's Italian restaurants, Ribot, where he met Ratha Chau, who was working there as a manager. Chau was impressed by Burnett's cooking abilities and quick advancement, so when he left to start his own enterprise, Kampuchea Restaurant, he eventually asked Burnett to join him in the new venture.
Kampuchea Restaurant opened in November of 2006. At the time, Burnett's background and training were in French and European style cuisine, so the flavors, technique, and ingredients of Southeast Asian cuisine were unfamiliar to him. "It was a challenge," says the softspoken, quietly intense Burnett, of not only learning a new cuisine but also introducing it in a fresh way to a city of diners unfamiliar with it. "For the first few months, I learned the flavors, and then I started creating as much as I could. Cooking is all the same, there are a certain number of techniques. With Cambodian cuisine, I was using the same techniques, but there was an intensification of more layers." Burnett proved to have a strong instinctual grasp of the new cuisines, and moreover, grew to love the unique flavors of Cambodian cuisine.
"It's very pungent, very strong, but no one ingredient overpowers the dish. I find European cuisine to be somewhat flat now. These flavors are exciting."
Burnett has shown through his creativity, ambition and adaptability a unique penchant for tackling an unfamiliar ethnic cuisine with deliberation and grace—and producing delectable results that highlight the culture's true flavors.
Burnett is responsible for creating many of the key dishes at Kampuchea Restaurant, including the very popular Tamarind Baby Back Ribs, the Crispy Pork Belly, the Seared Sweetbread, and House Cured Bacon Sandwich. He thoroughly enjoys the continuing challenge of keeping the menu of a new cuisine updated and exciting. "I love being in a restaurant where I'm not afraid to put organs and offals into dishes. I love that we make our own headcheese. I never thought fish sauce and shrimp paste would be my best friends. I love all these flavors."
Kampuchea Restaurant (78 Rivington Street, New York NY 10002, 2125293901) is a tribute to Cambodian flavors and street food, as reinterpreted by Chef-Owner Ratha Chau and Co-Executive Chef Scott Burnett. Menu items reflect the tastes of southeastern Cambodia combined with other regional influences. Kampuchea provides a lively communal dining atmosphere, with rustic oak wood furniture, tin ceiling, and simple accents to evoke a modern Asian street pub.