Beyond the Pass: How Kevin Inocencio Keeps a Michelin-Starred Kitchen Evolving

At Café Boulud New York, Executive Sous Chef Kevin Inocencio brings 15 years of international culinary experience to a role built around preparation, teamwork, and steady leadership.

The finished dish gets the attention, but much of the work behind it happens long before it reaches the table.

His career has taken him from Singapore to New York, with lessons learned in demanding kitchens along the way. Those experiences now shape how he cooks, solves problems, and leads his team at Café Boulud New York.

Kevin grew up around the cooking of his mother and grandmother in the Philippines. His relationship with food comes from the cultural importance that the Filipino people have with food. Pretty much every big thing is celebrated around a table full of food and surrounded by friends and family.

He was also drawn to creative work as a child. “Cooking is an art and a Chef’s Medium is Food.” He likes to say. An office career never felt like the right fit, while the pace and physical nature of a professional kitchen did.

At age 17, Kevine moved to Singapore and took up a Diploma in Culinary Skills at SHATEC Institutes. There he learned the fundamentals and began his professional journey.

Kevin spent much of his life in Singapore and the Philippines, giving him a strong connection to the food cultures of both countries. His culinary perspective grew through travel and restaurant work.

His first job in a high- level cooking setting was at Daniel Boulud’s DB Bistro Moderne in Singapore. Chef Kevin Inocencio’s first professional experience at DB Bistro Moderne in Singapore has been an important foundation for the international, French-influenced and Southeast Asian direction of his career, exposing him early on to a disciplined French culinary environment and the standards of a high-end international restaurant.

Travels through Thailand deepened his appreciation for its food culture through various kitchen trials, and he later gained a stronger foundation in Thai cuisine working under Chef David Thompson at Long Chim in Singapore. This experience shaped Chef Kevin’s unique ability to understand balance—sweet, sour, salty, and spicy. For a developing chef, this was an important lesson: a dish does not need to be complicated if the underlying flavor balance is precise. Further, the concept was unique at the time, using traditional Thai street-food concept, presenting them in a contemporary, accessible restaurant environment. Thompson's influence on Chef Kevin can be summarized in 3 themes: Thai culinary heritage, flavor balance, and authenticity.

His Southeast Asian background became an important part of his culinary identity rather than something separate from his French training.

He later worked as Sous Chef for Chef David Almany at Angeleno Singapore, where he gained experience with Italian cuisine. Chef Almany's cooking at Angeleno was rooted in the traditions of Southern Italian immigrants, interpreted through an American perspective. There, Chef Inocencio further broadened his international culinary experience under Chef David Almany, whose cooking combined traditional Italian-American techniques with the ingredient-driven philosophy of California cuisine. Working in a kitchen committed to producing its own pasta, cheese, breads, cured products, sauces, and desserts, Kevin developed a deeper appreciation for scratch cooking, ingredient quality, classical technique, and consistency. The experience also reinforced the importance of developing a distinctive culinary identity by combining traditional techniques with the chef's own cultural and professional influences.

These experiences gave him a broad point of view without pulling him away from his classical training. Chef Kevin’s cooking is rooted in technique, but he prefers to keep it open to different flavours and influences; while adding an element of playfulness to his cooking.

At DB Bistro Moderne, Kevin integrated these experiences within a sophisticated French fine-dining environment. That’s also where he found one of his strongest areas in the kitchen. Out of all the stations he worked during his time there, he found his passion working at the Fish Station. The delicate nature of seafood and the sheer variety of ingredients available constantly give him new ideas and piqued his curiosity. For similar reasons he was drawn to working with vegetables. Different textures and preparations gave him room to keep learning and testing new ideas.

For Chef Kevin, beginning his career in that environment established important technical foundations: discipline, precision, consistency, organization, and respect for classical culinary methods. Working in this restaurant, he also learned how to interpret French culinary traditions for an international clientele. This is an important feature of his unique skills today. Through these jobs, he acquired the foundations of classical culinary techniques. He also learned how to work them across other cultures and culinary traditions, which makes his cuisine unique.

In April of 2018, Kevin moved from Singapore to New York with only a few hundred dollars and a desire to prove himself in what he believes is one of the most challenging cities in the world for a Chef.

He kept working and gradually established himself in New York’s restaurant industry.

During the pandemic, Kevin joined a small team assembled by Chef Daniel Boulud to prepare meals for elderly and disabled New Yorkers. He became a part of something bigger working with people from City Meals on Wheels. He was able to help in a time when the world seemed to have stopped moving.

The experience reminded him that cooking reaches beyond the kitchen.

Kevin cares about the plate, but he also values the people connected to it. That includes guests enjoying their meals and cooks he has trained going on to succeed elsewhere. These things are what makes the struggle worth it.

Kevin's career ultimately came full circle. In 2023 he joined the opening team of Café Boulud at Maison Barnes New York, where he currently serves as Executive Sous Chef, which was awarded 1 Michelin Star in its first year, a result Kevin credits to the rigorous operational standards maintained behind the pass.

At Café Boulud, his Southeast Asian background became an important part of the restaurant's menu through Le Voyage, a series exploring the cuisines of individual countries and elevating them to fit the restaurant's fine-dining format. The Voyage to Thailand gave Kevin full control over that section of the menu, drawing directly on years spent cooking Thai food and pushing him to refine his own cooking style and presentation to stand alongside the rest of the menu. The Voyage to Brazil asked something different of him: with far less lived experience in the cuisine, he had to research it deeply in a short window of time. That kind of pressure, in his view, is what keeps a chef at the sous level and above engaged. Kevin puts himself on the spot to develop a dish, with the reward of seeing it make the menu, and an even bigger one if guests respond positively to it.

Chef Kevin Inocencio’s current role as Executive Sous Chef at Café Boulud in New York makes him distinctive because he occupies a relatively unusual position at the intersection of classical French technique, Southeast Asian culinary heritage, and international fine-dining experience.

Chef Kevin’s unique ability is distinguished by his ability to bridge classical French fine-dining technique with the authentic flavors and culinary traditions of Southeast Asia. His international career, beginning in Singapore and continuing through New York, has allowed him to develop a culinary perspective that is both technically rigorous and culturally diverse. In his current position as Executive Sous Chef at Café Boulud in New York, he brings this combination of French culinary discipline and Southeast Asian expertise to one of New York's established French dining institutions. His contribution is particularly distinctive because his international experience has directly informed the restaurant's contemporary interpretation of Southeast Asian cuisine and the rigorous French culinary techniques.

Earning a star within a restaurant's first year, in Kevin's view, starts with a menu that reads as creative and coherent from the first dish to the last, each course building alongside the ones around it. Consistency does the rest. Staff training becomes the real test, since every cook on the line has to reproduce that same level of food no matter what goes wrong mid-service. The pressure of chasing a star can be relentless, but it's easier to carry when everyone on the line understands the goal.

For him, good leadership comes down to helping people improve and giving them the skills to thrive on their own in an intensely demanding environment. He believes that having a team that is united in reaching a common goal can accomplish more than any single individual alone.

Chef Kevin’s career has been shaped by family meals in the Philippines, culinary training in Singapore, the food of different countries, and the challenge of proving himself in New York.

He has built his career learning directly under renowned chefs, including Daniel Boulud, David Almany, David Thompson, and Jonathan Kinsella.

As the Executive Sous Chef, Kevin is demonstrating that he can execute and help lead within another chef's culinary program.

As an Executive Chef, he would be expected to create and own the culinary program.

His career has developed a specialized combination of classical French technique, Southeast Asian culinary expertise, and high-level restaurant leadership. His current position as Executive Sous Chef at Café Boulud demonstrates his ability to operate at a senior level within one of New York's established French culinary institutions. An advancement to Executive Chef would represent the next logical stage of that progression, placing him in direct control of culinary strategy, menu development, kitchen operations, staff development, and leading the restaurant's overall culinary identity. Importantly, such a role would formally recognize and give independent expression to the specialized expertise he has developed throughout his international career.