From diner waitress to James Beard Winner: How Karen Akunowicz became Boston's "queen of pasta"

Over the past decade, Karen Akunowicz has emerged as one of Boston’s most celebrated chefs, carving out a niche as both a culinary innovator and a force of personality. From winning a James Beard Award to becoming a fan favorite on “Top Chef “— twice — Akunowicz has built an impressive career centered on her love for handmade pasta and Italian-inspired cuisine. 

Now at the helm of three restaurants and a nationwide pasta company, she’s redefining what it means to lead a food empire in New England. As for what's next? Boston — or perhaps the world — is her oyster.

In a lively conversation, Akunowicz opened up about her journey from a New Jersey diner to the forefront of Boston’s dining scene, the lessons learned along the way, and how a simple touch of cream can elevate even the humblest dish. Her humor, authenticity and passion are evident in every word, as she reflects on her past, celebrates her present and hints at what’s to come.

Karen Akunowicz attends the 2024 James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards at Lyric Opera Of Chicago on June 10, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois. (Jeff Schear/Getty Images for James Beard Foundation)

The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length. 

This is neither here nor there, but my brother and I have developed this tradition of watching older "Top Chef" seasons whenever he's home for the holidays. So, we actually just so happened to watch your first season back again last week, which was really great.

Can I tell you something? I swear this is true. You are the third person to tell me that this week. Yeah! [People] gathering with their brother[s] and they're like, I was just watching your season. I was just watching your first season. And I was like, really? Yeah. So I think that might be a tradition. I think "Top Chef" has really become, of course, a household name, but kind of a tradition for a lot of people in a lot of families.

That's so cool. I am so happy to hear that. And I did also want to note that I live, I don't know, 20, 25 minutes from Kearny.

So I saw in your bio that you were from New Jersey and I was like, 'Oh, I definitely want to ask about that then.' [But] I was like, 'OK, I'm not going to do that.' Where do you live?

I grew up in Bloomfield!

Yeah, my parents still live in Kearny and my sister's in Parsippany, my aunt is in Vernon. Yeah, everyone's still there.

That is so cool. How funny! Initially, why did you head to Boston?

So I did my undergrad at UMass Amherst. And so when I was in school, I had a summer where I was an intern at the State House in Boston. I worked for a representative Ellen Story ... and I lived in Boston that summer. And so when I graduated I was kind of like, yeah, I'll give that a summer — and then 20, oh gosh, 26 years later, I'm still here.

That's amazing. I was such a fan of yours on "Top Chef." I followed your career since, but I did want to check in terms of for anyone who's not familiar with your journey, could you break that down a little bit for them?

So my first season of "Top Chef" was in, I believe we filmed it in 2015. So I just said to somebody recently like, oh my gosh, that was 10 years ago.

Yeah! The anniversary's coming up.

Yeah, big anniversary. So that was 10 years ago. And at the time, I was the executive chef and managing partner at a restaurant in Boston called Myers and Chang. The year that I filmed "Top Chef," I got my first James Beard nomination for Best Chef Northeast and I was nominated three consecutive years after that. And in 2018, I won my James Beard Award for Best Chef Northeast.

Congrats, belatedly.

Thank. Oh, thank you so much. If you look, my... [she gestures above her, where the plaque is affixed to the wall]. You know what? We have to celebrate all the things, all things we can celebrate.

Right? A hundred percent.

At that point, I was working with my partners at Myers + Chang, Christopher Myers and Joanne Chang. We’d talked about opening another restaurant together, but they decided it wasn’t in the cards. Joanne, who’s the pastry chef and owner of Flour Bakery—and wildly successful—wanted to focus on the bakeries. They told me, “We love you, and if you have other ideas or projects you want to do, you may want to move on and pursue them.”

That happened right before I won my award. I’d been with them for seven years and decided it was time to go out on my own and open a restaurant. While I was excited, it was also scary — raising money independently, being both the chef and the sole operator of my restaurants. I was lucky to find a spot in South Boston that I fell in love with immediately. It wasn’t a big, shiny new building — it was this quirky, old space with a lot of history. A million years ago, it was a Whitey Bulger bar. It has a weird layout and a ton of problems, but my spouse and I tend to love spaces like that.

That’s how Fox & the Knife came to be. It’s a 75-seat space and my love letter to Emilia Romagna, Italy, where I lived for a year and a half, working as a pasta maker and chef. We opened in 2019, and a year later, the pandemic hit. But we stayed open.

In 2021, I opened Bar Volpe, also in South Boston. It’s a bigger space, focused on Southern Italian cuisine, with an event space, a private dining room, and a beautiful bar. It lets us do things we couldn’t at Fox & the Knife because of its size. Then, this past March, I opened Fox & Flight at Logan Airport. That menu is a “greatest hits” from both restaurants, and it’s a beautiful space—especially for an airport, but even as a standalone restaurant.

That's wonderful.

They're all very exciting. And in between those times, I wrote two cookbooks and I am fortunate enough to work at the Food Network. 

Want more great food writing and recipes? Subscribe to Salon Food's newsletter, The Bite.

That's fantastic. Thank you for that. Going back a little bit, I wanted to ask, I think you said it was 2018. I was wondering, after those years of nominations, how validating was that James Beard win?

I think we've all heard people say, 'Oh, it's just an honor being nominated.' Let me tell you: It really, truly is. It's such an honor to be nominated. But you get nominated and nominated and it's four years and it remains such a huge accomplishment. Everyone says it's something you always dreamed of. [They'd ask], 'Did you always dream about winning a James Beard award?'

And I said, 'No, I never dreamed about winning a James Beard Award because I never thought that it was something that was attainable to me.' I never thought that someone like me would even be in consideration because I have never worked in fine dining. And I don't know, I said it in my speech when I won all those years ago, I was literally a waitress in a diner in New Jersey, in the black and whites. I worked at the Arlington Diner in Belleville. And so truly so to think that somebody like me, that's amazing. A waitress from the Arlington Diner could win one of the most prestigious culinary awards in the country. I never even believed that it could happen to me.

That's incredible. Congrats! And then pivoting a little bit to present day, I was saying how I love the moniker, the nickname Boston's Queen of Pasta and I was wondering what that nickname means to you?

Thank you for asking, I don't know if anyone's ever asked me that before, but Boston Magazine wrote a great article about me, I believe it was Jackie Cain who wrote the article and really was like, Karen, it's like the undisputed Boston's queen of pasta. So cool!

In addition to Fox the Knife, I mean, both restaurants really focus on handmade pasta. I never freeze any of my pasta. It is literally made fresh every day.

We have a glass walled pasta room at Bar Volpe where you can watch, you can walk down the street and watch our pasta makers. I also own a fresh pasta company called Fox Pasta, Fox Pasta Company, which started during the pandemic. We started as many people did, but still, we ship our pasta nationwide with Gold Belly who are our partners. And I think we do it and we do it really well. I've spent not only the time that I spent living in Italy where I trained as a pasta maker, but I go back to Italy all the time and whenever I'm there, I make pasta with women all over the country. So I never stop learning and I never stop being amazed by the opportunities that I have and the people that I have to work with. So we really try and bring all of that back to Boston and share that with everyone here in our city.

Lovely. That's so cool. Seperately, what would you say sets Hood apart from other brands from other brands? 

Oh my gosh. I am a New England girly and so I mean, I know who's the best.

Whether [or not] you've grown up putting Hood cream in your coffee, it's synonymous with the gold standard. It is the best of the best. It is consistency, it is quality in and I mean, it's what I have in my house. I have a two-year-old daughter. I mean, that's what I give to my daughter, to my family.

What are some of your favorite uses for heavy cream in general?

I am not a pastry chef. I'm a savory chef through and through and the thing that I love about cream is that it really brings a touch of luxury to any dish that you're making. 

I talk a lot about in my cookbook or when I'm teaching, I talk a lot about giving home cooks recipes that are really attainable, but giving them a little bit of that restaurant magic, a little bit of that picking up that makes restaurant food so special. And for me, one of my secret weapons — just a dash of Hood cream is going to really enrich or enliven any dish that you're making.

Do you have any unique uses for heavy cream?

I'm a very traditional cook. I mean, I think that's one of the things I say. I don't do a lot of crazy things, but I think that one of the recipes that I love and that I is actually on the menu at Bar Volpe and that people just kind of go crazy for, it's a very traditional pasta dish, but I think that people are a little bit like, huh? It's pasta al limone, it's spaghetti al limone. So it's a dish that has cream and fresh lemon juice. Plus lemon zest. I add some herbs and I like to add crab to it.

It's rich and it's bright and the crab is sweet and tender and all of these textures and flavors together, it makes it a super crave-able dish.

But I think that people think sometimes you'd be like, 'Oh, cream and citrus together, it going to curdle?' Or do those things go together? One, if you're using a great product, the quality and consistency is amazing. Your sauce is not going to break. It's going to be beautiful and homogenous. It's going to be the perfect mouthfeel, but also acid and fat love each other because they play off of each other. You never want to add fat or richness to a dish without adding salt and acidity You also want it to feel light enough that you can go dancing afterwards. And that's the perfect balance of the spaghetti.

There were some photos with the spaghetti and then a mushroom risotto and a parsnip white miso soup and that soup really stood out for me. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the development of that as well.

So, the parsnip white miso soup, I think this time of year — especially in New England and the Northeast in general — it's root vegetable time. And so it's like "squash, squash, squash, squash, squash," which is fine, but I think can sometimes be a little bit sweet.

Parsnip White Miso Soup (Agustin Floriano for Hood Cream)

Yeah, I agree.

You see a lot of butternut squash. So, this is my take on a soup that's made with a root vegetable. It's made with a parsnip. I think parsnips are very interesting. I think they're the character actor of the root vegetable world. You have your leading ladies, your butternut squash, carrots and then you have the character actor that you can't look away from. And I think that's what a parsnip is, right? It has this earthy, almost menthol flavor to it. It's light and it's rich at the same time. And so how do you take that and for me? It's all about balance.

So how do you add a little bit of sweetness and a little bit of tartness to it? I add green apples to the soup. How do you do add richness? I add Hood cream to the soup, so it's creamy, but it's still light. And we're adding unctuousness and umami and savoriness to it because I don't want something that's cloying or sweet. So we add white miso or shiro miso to it.

And so you have these ingredients that are all beautiful ingredients and when you put them together, they all really sing. So you have this light, but rich, creamy, earthy, yum, umami-full kind of soup. And it's one of my favorites. It's a standby in my house and it's also in my cookbook, as well.

Stay tuned for part 2 of my conversation with Chef Akunowicz, to come shortly.