Michael Kaphan

Michael Kaphan's interest in cooking began at a young age, watching his Bubbie in her Brooklyn kitchen, reveling in the smells wafting from the stovetop. Raised in Staten Island, Kaphan got his first culinary job at a local catering hall and eventually landed at Peter Kump’s New York Cooking School, now known as the Institute of Culinary Education. After honing his skills in several of NYC's finer kitchens, Kaphan landed at Zoe, the former buzzy Soho restaurant on Prince Street, where he spent two years as executive chef. Wanting to increase his knowledge of different foods and cultures, Kaphan took some time off to travel and upon his return he began working with Farmer & the Fish co-founder Edward Taylor at Taylor's wholesale seafood company, Down East Seafood. During this time, Kaphan enrolled in a baccalaureate program for agriculture at SUNY Cobleskill, gaining the knowledge and skills to cultivate the farm he and Taylor would soon acquire in North Salem, NY.

Since 2012, Kaphan has been the chef-farmer behind the Farmer & the Fish brand, first at the Purdy's restaurant on the farm and in 2016 at the Gramercy location in the heart of Manhattan. Together Kaphan and Taylor raise the bar on "farm-to-table" dining, sourcing their restaurants' produce from their terraced, five-acre farm in North Salem, with a large greenhouse, hoop house and root cellar for year-round production.