Chef Austin Perkins, Executive Chef, Nick’s Cove
Austin Perkins, like many chefs, grew up in a household where families gathered in the kitchen and spent his childhood eating and learning to cook food from scratch. With his father, Austin learned the fundamentals of cooking from pastas and breads to fish and meat. As a teenager, he worked in front-of-house positions in his hometown of Petaluma and along the West Marin coast, gaining an even deeper appreciation for local food and the people behind it.
After graduating, Austin enrolled in San Francisco’s Tante Marie’s Cooking School, with a small and intensely focused culinary curriculum. Afterwards, he went on to work at some of the Bay Area’s most notable restaurants including the two-Michelin-starred Cyrus in Healdsburg under the direction of executive chef Douglas Keane. In 2008, Austin joined the kitchen team at Nick’s Cove as Executive Sous Chef and eventually worked his way up to his current Executive Chef position by 2011.
Austin was first introduced to The Perfect Purée through his restaurant colleagues who worked behind the bar. Austin decided to bring the purees into the kitchen and create sauces for savory dishes and add fruit to pastry applications. He has found it to be a much more economical alternative to making purees in-house, with the prep times greatly reduced and the cost of the purees more affordable. For example, when blood oranges were at a premium, it was much easier for him to purchase The Perfect Purée at a lower price and it also eliminated additional labor costs.
Now, at Nick’s Cove, Austin makes a duck breast dish with a pomegranate gastrique that is made using The Perfect Purée Pomegranate Concentrate. He also does an Asian-style salad with a sweet ginger dressing using The Perfect Puré Ginger Puree. His menu changes daily, but he has a freezer stocked with a wide assortment of Perfect Purée flavors. He loves the products for their consistency and high level of quality, and he knows that, batch for batch, he’ll have a consistent flavor, texture and quality with The Perfect Purée products.