Celebrated Washington DC chef Todd Gray, along with his business partner and spouse, Ellen Kassoff Gray, have operated the award winning restaurant Equinox near the White House for over a decade. They also run Muse, the lunchtime cafe at the Corcoran Gallery. Chef Gray was named the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington’s 2011 RAMMY Chef of the Year. His approach to cooking is one of layered flavors using local farm to table resources.
ABOUT EXECUTIVE CHEF JOSEPH PAIRE
At 32 years old, Executive Chef of Todd Grays Watershed, Joseph Paire has accomplished much and holds many accolades under his culinary belt. Paire developed a passion and a sense of pride in cooking since a very young age with a family that loves to cook. A native of Washington, D.C. which is rare, Paire graduated from Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI with Associates in Culinary Arts and B.S. in Food Service Management. After graduation, Paire trained rigorously under renowned chefs, Robert Gadsby, and Jeff Armstrong, a much celebrated chef by Gourmet & Esquire Magazine
Shortly after, Paire returned to his hometown in hopes to continue growing the blossoming food scene in the nation’s capital. Formally trained to be a top chef, landing his first sous chef job at 24 years old with Jackson 20 in Old Town, Alexandria, VA setting the perfect stage on becoming the Executive Sous Chef of Mussel Bar in Bethesda, MD. There, he received a small write up in Washingtonian Magazine in 2010. In 2011, Paire collaborated with Alan Popovsky, local DC restaurateur, to open LINCOLN Restaurant as the opening Chef de Cuisine. Joseph Moved on in 2012 to open Farmers Fishers Bakers at the Washington Harbor The Highly successful and always busy restaurant from the North Dakota Farmers Union.
After years of experiences and working under master chefs and culinary visionaries, Paire has truly developed a unique style of cooking that is “sophisticatedly simple, palate-pleasing, and playful,” says Paire, the now Executive Chef of Todd Grays Watershed located in the heart of NOMA. Always the visionary Chef, Paire aims to please and reinvent: “As a the Executive Chef, I want to bring to The Watershed the vision of not what it used to be, but the vision of what it’s going to be”. Paire currently resides in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington D.C.. AND If not a talented and blossoming chef, Paire admitted to wanting to be a mixologist creating one of a kind bar programs much like Bar Chef extraordinaire, Todd Thrasher, Chef Paire’s self-proclaimed hero.
