Executive Chef Amilkar Gonell
Executive Chef Amilkar Gonell is an award-winning Chef with a 20-year career in food preparation, menu development, and kitchen operations management. Chef Gonell is considered by many to be a culinary innovator known for producing top-quality creative dishes. His first memories of food revolve around helping his parents prepare food homemade recipes in his native Dominican Republic where he was a teen Chef prodigy receiving praises for this unique seasoning and cooking techniques.
Chef Amilkar moved to New York City in 2005 and landed his first job as a dishwasher. His cooking ability coupled with his drive and relentless attitude to win propelled him to become Executive Chef within a short period of time. He is passionate about food, writing, and music and takes great pride in mixing traditional flavors from Spain, Asia, Latin America, Italy, France and even venturing into Haute cuisine.
In 2017, Chef Gonell co-founded Gonell Enterprise with his wife Pamela Gonell. Gonell Enterprise is a successful catering and food consultancy firm that specializes in the fusion of Latin cuisine in the Merrimack, MA area. Within the first year of operations, Gonell Enterprise secured a number of high-profile contracts with well-established companies including New Balance, Charm Sciences, Table Talk Pies, Joseph’s Bakery as well as local government agencies, non-profit organizations, and multiple real estate developers and brokers.
He is highly regarded as a premier gastronomic consultant for some of New York’s most prolific Latin restaurants including Sao Restaurant, iL Sole Restaurant, Rush Tapas, Vapor Lounge, Angry Burger, Salsa Catering, Valerio Juice Bar, Garys Restaurant, Delicioso Juice Bar, Don Matías Fusión Cuisine, 809 Caribbean Restaurant, Mamas Lounge and many more.
Chef Gonell is a firm believer that in order to achieve delicious fusions, one must have a lot of passion, enough care to select the ingredients, respect for the warm environment that the kitchen generates, and an extra passion for the people that will delight you with the food preparation.
Mr. Fusion breaks the World Guinness Record of the “Largest serving of Mangú”. The project was organized by “Flavor Fusion Fest” and the main chefs were Amilkar Gonell in association with his counterpart María Marte, holder of two Michelin stars, and the talented Pamela Gonell.