Chris Cosentino

Growing up in Rhode Island, Chris Cosentino spent his time clamming, commercial fishing, and cranking the pasta machine in his great-grandmother’s kitchen. He was raised on a cuisine particular to parts of New England where Atlantic seafood, Yankee fare and classic Italian cooking fuse into one colorful gastronomy. Creating good food was a family tradition, as Cosentino’s maternal ancestors, the Eastons, were the founders of Newport’s beloved Easton’s Sausage Company. Today, as executive chef of San Francisco’s Incanto, where he cooks in an earthy rustic Italian style, Cosentino is proving that a penchant for meats may just be hereditary. Cured, raw or roasted; traditional cut or offal, meat is his muse. Incanto’s lauded charcuterie selection, all cured in-house, ranges from mortadella to fragrant fennel salame to a sweetbread terrine and an intense salt-cured pork liver. Cosentino also has an abiding passion for offal, and is currently at work on a definitive cookbook on the subject. At Incanto, he features offal on his daily changing menu as well as in an annual Head to Tail dinner, and in a Quarto Quinto, or fifth quarter tasting menu.

Yet this meat-loving chef does not ignore produce. California is a giant garden, he says, and indeed, he can be spotted at San Francisco’s Ferry Plaza farmers market every Saturday morning, rain or shine. His curiosity does not stop at the farm, and Cosentino is an avid researcher of cooking techniques, equipment, and culinary lore through the ages, which he is eager to share with his customers. Everyday I have the opportunity to educate people, just as each day is ultimately an education for me, he says.

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