If you’ve been watching this season of Hell’s Kitchen, then you know Chef Brandon Kerr (of Colorado’s Stone Cellar Bistro) has been crushing it. In every singles or head-to-head competition this year, except one, he’s either walked away with a five-out-of-five rating or a point.

This isn’t too surprising when you look at his culinary journey.

Beginning his career at age 15 washing dishes, he rose through the ranks during high school before graduating with a degree in culinary science from Keiser University in Florida. Between the degree and the fact that he worked full-time in the restaurant industry through school, Kerr was ready to take over the world of food. At age 20, he set his sights on Colorado and cooked in a number of different fine dining restaurants before opening Stone Cellar Bistro with Jordan Alley in 2022.

I recently spoke with Kerr about the culinary adventures that led him to Chef Ramsay and Hell’s Kitchen, and how Stone Cellar Bistro may have the most seasonal menu in the state.

When I asked Kerr about the intensity found in a kitchen environment like Ramsay’s, he made it clear that his French training through the years set him up perfectly for just such an experience. “[I went through] all of it—the kicking, the screaming chefs, and throwing shit in the kitchen. And that’s no lie; I am 100% serious when it comes to that. I spent years in that environment. I spent years having spoons thrown at my back when I was on the line, and I spent years getting yelled at and berated. As shitty as that sounds, it makes you learn pretty fucking quick. It’s one of those things that’s like, you learn and you figure that out, but then you also get to a point where you understand that everybody has their own learning style.”

With that said, I mentioned how during this season Ramsay seems to have mellowed out a little—he hasn’t punched nearly the amount of fish that he used to—and wondered if he was still as intimidating as ever. Kerr chuckled, “He’s not incredibly intimidating. Honestly, he’s a great guy. When it comes to the challenges and the off-camera stuff, he’s a blast. He’s great to talk to—picking his brain is awesome. But when it comes to service, he turns it on and it’s pretty serious.”

When I asked Kerr about the dinner services, and what are the biggest challenges chefs have to face, two immediately popped out.

The first; “patience is the complicated part. It gets easier as the season goes on, because people start understanding when to speak, and when to leave enough open air to make it intentional.”

He continued, “Each of the dishes, too, have multiple parts to them. There were 17 items on the menu when we first started, though we’ve kind of moved things around on and off the menu throughout the season. But, EVERY single dish on that menu relied on two, if not more, of the stations. So, if I’m picking up one item for one of the apps—maybe the starch is coming off another station, maybe the garnish is coming off another station—and say I have the most important part of the dish (lobster or steak or something like that), I need to be able to communicate to all the other different stations [without yelling over each other].”

According to Kerr, the second toughest element of dinner service is “feeling like your hands are tied, and you’re in the service of ‘you’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t.’ Like, you see someone across from you just absolutely going down in a ball of flames, and you jump over there to help them, you’re going to get screamed at for jumping over there and helping them. And then, if you don’t and you just watch them fumble, then you’re going to get yelled at for not helping them.”

Though a brigade system is common in high-end kitchens, Kerr says his system at Stone Cellar is incredibly different than the one at Hell’s Kitchen. “The biggest difference is trying to have a more laid-back environment. My business partner and I opened Stone Cellar—we’re just over two years old. Both him and I grew up in French kitchens. He worked for Thomas Keller a couple of times, a couple of other people; so him and I have been around. We’ve worked all over the US and we wanted to bring that vibe of ‘this is an open environment, everybody take a deep breath and relax,’ [with] everybody learning from each other. We didn’t necessarily want to run this like a hardcore hierarchy brigade, berating people and all that. We wanted to run a very tight ship, with very good food, and be a comfortable environment.”

And it’s clear this comfortable environment helps to foster creativity.

“Our menu changes a little bit every day, and we print menus every single day. It’s cool to be able to be a little bit flexible. And then, kind of put some of that responsibility on the cooks as well. Instead of holding their hand all the time and being like, ‘This is what we’re going to cook today,’ having them go into the restaurant the next day and see really nice onions from this farm and ask ‘What do you want to do with them?’ And I ask, ‘I don’t know, what do you want to do with them?’”

It’s because of this free flow of ideas they are able to feature dishes like the seasonal steak tartare that is currently a favorite of Kerr. “We’ve got a tartare on [the menu] right now that’s pretty fantastic. We’ve got a 45-day dry-aged strip [steak] from a buddy of mine, he’s got a small dry-aging company that does that for our tartare. Our sauce is made from fermented conifer, like conifer tips, like spruce tips.”

While fermented, he says it’s more closely related to syrup. “You get these little tips off the tree, this new growth in the spring typically, and then you pack those in sugar (or whatever you want to preserve them in), and eventually it makes this syrup. We use this syrup to create a sauce. We make brioche in-house, and we’re making those into really nice croutons, and some fried conifer as well. It sounds a little weird, it sounds a little intense, but it’s very mellow and everything in the dish is very cohesive. It’s very Colorado.”

Even with bouncing between questions regarding his Hell’s Kitchen experiences and ones about Stone Cellar, there was one thing Kerr repeated a few times as being a lesson he’s learned from both places that he’ll take with him for the rest of his life.

“[I learned that] being able to understand your background, and understand your strengths and weaknesses, and then taking everybody else’s strengths and weaknesses in as well. Seeing what everybody else communicates better on or operates better on—if they’re better at plating, if they’re better at management, if they’re better at cooking fish—understanding that you may not have the perfect way. But when you do have a very good way and know that you’re better than other people at a certain thing, then maybe push your opinion a little bit more and be able to stand your ground and be true to yourself.”

He also stressed, “Everybody needs to be treated individually. You can’t just spew to the masses and expect to have the exact same outcome.”

Maybe I’m biased, but I truly believe Chef Brandon Kerr will win the entire competition.

His level of finesse in the dishes he’s presented has been at an elite caliber; Ramsay has often been surprised at the level of depth and sophistication in Kerr’s offerings. And when you hear the passion and excitement in his voice when describing his menu at Stone Cellar, it’s hard to believe anyone will be able to knock Kerr off the top spot.