Alex Sorenson
Alex’s career in the food world got a start when he picked up a part time job as a prep cook in a kitchen in Charlottesville, while getting his B.A. in Cognitive Science at the University of Virginia. He pursued a career in software development for a number of years, but his latent passion for cooking, sparked by his mother’s excellent home cooking and a childhood largely spent in Europe, finally got the better of him. In 2004 he scrapped the company he had recently founded, took an internship in a kitchen, and hasn’t looked back since.
Alex has cooked in some of the top kitchens in the city, including Mas (farmhouse), Sumile, Varietal and Public, and was recently the Executive Chef at Brooklyn’s Montauk Club. To complement his time in the kitchen, Alex took a break in 2006 to get better acquainted with his ingredients by spending time working on small organic farms and vineyards in France. He learned invaluable lessons over the course of that summer spent raising pigs in Normandy, picking grapes in Bordeaux, herding goats, making cheese, foraging for wild mushrooms, and cooking in farmhouse kitchens. This experience further solidified his dedication to the support of sustainable, local farming and a cooking style that highlights, with restraint and sophistication, the natural quality and bounty of our region.