Guest Chef Night with Chef Aaron Tekulve

Chef Aaron Tekulve takes over the kitchen at FareStart Restaurant on Thursday, November 19, for another Guest Chef Night. It's a three-course meal, and the service is handled by volunteers from the community. All the revenue and donations from the evening go toward FareStart's job training and placement programs.

Tekulve is the chef behind Surrell, which he named for his mother and grandmother. He grew up in a family steeped in cooking and started his career in a restaurant at 14. He specializes in Modern Pacific Northwest Cuisine, and his resume reads like a tour of some of the city's most respected kitchens: he worked at Canlis and served as sous chef for John Sundstrom at Lark. He also competed on Food Network's Chopped back in 2015, and in 2022, Wine Enthusiast named Surrell one of the Top 50 Best Restaurants in America.

The night is part of a series that pairs premier local chefs with FareStart students. The restaurant is run by FareStart, a James Beard Award-winning nonprofit that also operates cafés in South Lake Union and Beacon Hill. The students work alongside professional chefs as part of the Food Pathways Program, a free 16-week on-the-job training program that provides housing, substance use recovery support, mental health counseling, and job-searching support. Guest Chef Night was revived as a highlight of the restaurant's reopening, so this is one of the nights that brings the whole mission into the dining room.

It's a three-course meal served by volunteers, with all the proceeds supporting those training programs. The dinner is on Thursday, November 19, at FareStart Restaurant, 700 Virginia Street in Seattle.