πΊπΈ United States Β· American cuisine Β· b. 1970
Pioneer of American molecular gastronomy; chef-owner of wd~50 and Du's Donuts.
Wylie Dufresne is an American chef widely credited with bringing the techniques of European molecular gastronomy β hydrocolloids, transglutaminase, foams, gels, sous-vide β to American restaurant cooking. He was born in Providence, Rhode Island, to a restaurant-industry family (his father Dewey Dufresne was a longtime restaurateur in New York) and graduated from Colby College in 1992 with a degree in philosophy before enrolling at the French Culinary Institute in New York.
After graduating from the FCI in 1993 he went to work for Jean-Georges Vongerichten, first at Jo Jo and then at Jean-Georges, eventually becoming chef de cuisine at Vongerichten's Prime restaurant at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. In 1999 he returned to New York to open 71 Clinton Fresh Food, a small Lower East Side restaurant whose ambitious cooking on a tiny budget earned him a New York Times two-star review and Food & Wine Best New Chef honors in 2001.
In 2003, with his father Dewey, he opened wd~50 on Clinton Street β the restaurant that defined his career. wd~50 served avant-garde tasting menus built around techniques unfamiliar to most American chefs at the time: powdered foie gras, scrambled-egg ravioli with melted-cheese skin, deep-fried mayonnaise, cold-smoked corn-flake noodles. It won a Michelin star in 2007 and held it for most of its run. wd~50 closed in 2014 when the building was demolished, and is now broadly recognized as the most influential American molecular-gastronomy restaurant of its era β a training ground for chefs including Christina Tosi, Sam Mason, Alex Stupak and many others.
After wd~50 he opened Alder in the East Village (2013β2016), a more casual restaurant exploring the same ideas in pub-food format, and in 2017 launched Du's Donuts at the William Vale hotel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn β a project that brought hydrocolloid-driven texture work to American cake donuts. He has won the James Beard Award for Best Chef New York City (2013) and has been an active culinary consultant and educator since.
Dufresne is interested in questions about food as much as in food itself: what makes an egg taste like an egg, why a mayonnaise behaves the way it does, whether the texture of a noodle can be transferred to a corn flake. He uses the techniques of modernist cooking not for spectacle but as investigative tools β a way to understand familiar ingredients by breaking them apart and rebuilding them differently.
Cake-donut shop opened 2017. Applies modernist texture techniques to American cake donuts.
The defining restaurant of his career. Held a Michelin star and was the most influential American molecular-gastronomy restaurant of the 2000s.
Casual gastropub exploring modernist techniques in pub-food format.
His first solo restaurant; won Food & Wine Best New Chef in 2001.
These recipes from our database reflect the american cooking tradition that Wylie works in. They are not direct reproductions of Wylie's copyrighted recipes, but traditional dishes inspired by the same culinary heritage.
βWe are not in the business of shock. We are in the business of asking questions about ingredients you think you already know.β
β Interview, Eater
βTransglutaminase is a tool. A whisk is a tool. The judgement is what makes the cook.β
β wd~50: The Cookbook (2017)
Graduates from Colby College with a degree in philosophy.
Graduates from the French Culinary Institute in New York.
Joins Jean-Georges Vongerichten at Jo Jo, then Jean-Georges.
Becomes chef de cuisine at Vongerichten's Prime at the Bellagio, Las Vegas.
Opens 71 Clinton Fresh Food on the Lower East Side, New York.
Named Food & Wine Best New Chef.
Opens wd~50 on Clinton Street with his father Dewey Dufresne.
wd~50 earns its first Michelin star.
Wins James Beard Award for Best Chef New York City; opens Alder in the East Village.
wd~50 closes when its building is demolished.
Opens Du's Donuts in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Wylie Dufresne is an American chef widely regarded as the pioneer of molecular gastronomy in the United States. He is the chef-owner of Du's Donuts in Brooklyn and was the chef-owner of wd~50 (2003β2014), the most influential American molecular-gastronomy restaurant of its era.
wd~50 was Dufresne's flagship restaurant on Clinton Street in New York's Lower East Side, open from 2003 to 2014. It served avant-garde tasting menus built on modernist techniques β hydrocolloids, sous-vide, transglutaminase, foams. It held a Michelin star for most of its run and is now widely considered the defining American molecular restaurant of the 2000s. It closed when its building was demolished.
Du's Donuts, opened in 2017 at the William Vale hotel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, applies the same texture-engineering and modernist techniques Dufresne used at wd~50 to American cake donuts. He has described it as a deliberate move away from the operational intensity of fine dining toward a craft format with a wider audience.
Yes. Christina Tosi worked as a pastry assistant at wd~50 in the mid-2000s before joining David Chang's Momofuku group and founding Milk Bar. Tosi has repeatedly named Dufresne as a formative mentor, and many of Milk Bar's signature techniques (textural play, cereal-milk distillation) trace back to wd~50.
Dufresne studied philosophy at Colby College, then graduated from the French Culinary Institute in 1993. He spent his early career under Jean-Georges Vongerichten at Jo Jo, Jean-Georges and Prime (Bellagio, Las Vegas) before opening his first restaurant on the Lower East Side in 1999.
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