Sean Gray was chef de cuisine of Momofuku Ko in New York when I spoke with him for The Luxury of Attention. The book’s roll call records that Ko closed in November 2023 and that Gray now cooks at the Sergeantsville Inn in New Jersey.
Gray gave me the phrase I use to correct the most common misunderstanding about creativity in kitchens and hotels. Creativity is a muscle. It needs exercise or it atrophies. In his telling, originality is something a chef builds through repetition rather than something that arrives as a gift, and working alongside a group of creative people is how he keeps the muscle in use. He also pointed to something structural about Ko that made the practice easier. The restaurant had a bar adjoining the main dining room, and the pressure to produce something perfect was lower there. It gave the team a place to try ideas that were not yet ready for the tasting menu.
“Creativity is like a muscle, it needs exercise or it atrophies, and working with a group of creative people helps me build that muscle constantly.” Sean Gray, then chef de cuisine, Momofuku Ko
Two practices sit inside what he told me, and I pull both out in the book. The first is the company of other creative people, which turns creativity from a solitary act into a daily habit of the team. The second is the lower pressure venue, where an idea can fail at the cost of a bar snack rather than at the cost of a tasting menu. Most kitchens have the first if they look for it. Fewer have built the second on purpose.
In the book, Sean Gray appears in Chapter 6, The Creative Act, where his muscle metaphor sets up the chapter’s three disciplines of range, failure and constraint, and where his account of Ko’s bar stands alongside Boer’s team sessions and Orlando’s rule of trying anything twice as a working example of how a kitchen rehearses originality rather than waiting for it.
“The pressure to create something perfect is less there. It’s a space for us to try out new ideas that might not be ready for our tasting menu.” Sean Gray, then chef de cuisine, Momofuku Ko