EXECUTIVE CHEF JOHN CAPUTO
Raised in Brooklyn, New York, John grew up around the dining room table. Food was a very important part of his family’s lives. “Everyone in my family cooks,” says John, “it was one of the many ways my brothers and I competed and the family bonded.” But, it was his Grandfather, who owned Italian markets in Manhattan’s “Little Italy”, who influenced him early on. “I would come home from baseball practice to find my Grandfather cooking something like live snails or broiling eels when I was 10 years old, and he always made me taste everything. This formed my understanding of many foods that seemed foreign to others and helped me later on when learning how to cook professionally.”After studying Hotel and Restaurant Management at the University of Denver, John began his formal kitchen education in California at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. While attending CCA, Caputo met Jean Claude Fabre, who invited him to France to work in his Michelin starred restaurant as an apprentice. John spent nearly a year working for both Chef Fabre and Chef Claude Giraud at his two starred Michelin restaurant Le Reverebere in the South of France. During his off time John traveled throughout the country inhaling the French culture.
Upon returning to San Francisco, Caputo worked in some of the best kitchens throughout the city and learned from some of the best chefs. Among them were Julien Serrano of Masa’s, Jan Birnbaum and Todd Humphries of Campton Place and Gary Danko. Caputo later became chef at the renowned Jordan Winery in Sonoma County. There he began connecting to the farms in the wine country, a practice adopted while working in France. Many mornings he would pick produce in the fields and then use his harvest to create fabulous dishes that evening.
From Jordan, John opened his own “labor of love,” the critically acclaimed Socca Restaurant in San Francisco. “Socca was a tribute to my time spent in the south of France, a reflection back to enjoying food and wine prepared honestly.”
The Chef’s new challenge at BIN 36 excites him. “With this great list of wines comes a vast array of flavors and textures, it is like opening a box of 64 Crayola Crayons. You have all these different colors to play with.” But it’s still the same philosophy, “procure great ingredients, prepare them simply and let the individual ingredients speak for themselves.
John Caputo now resides on the north side of Chicago with his wife Katie and enjoys walking the golf course when he is not in his kitchen cooking.