Chef Chris Kenworth Out at Todd Gray's Watershed

Tom Sietsema reports this afternoon that chef de cuisine Chris Kenworth is officially out at Watershed, which had opened back in April with a lot of promise as the project of Equinox owners Todd Gray and Ellen Kassoff Gray. It was also supposed to help power the growth of NoMa and change the way people think about hotel restaurants, seeing as how it's based in a Hilton Garden Inn. But the reviews have been coming in over the past month or so and it hasn't looked so good — Sietsema gave the place one star while the Washingtonian's Ann Limpert was only slightly more generous with 1.5 stars just this week. One can only imagine that this kinda-sorta had something to do with the change-up.

Todd Gray confirms to the critic that Kenworth left the restaurant Tuesday and explains that "the food he was doing was not the ? style I set it out to be: simple shrimp and grits, simple gumbo." He also reveals that Equinox chef de cuisine Godofredo Vaquerano will step in to fill the void at Watershed, while it's likely that an unnamed female chef will take over the kitchen at Equinox one week from today.

· Watershed Replaces Its Chef de Cuisine [WaPo]
· All Previous Watershed Coverage [-EDC-]

[R. Lopez]