Chef Kate Williams: "A gift to the city of Detroit"
Kate Williams, chef and owner of Lady of the House in Detroit's Corktown, has created quite a buzz since opening last fall.
The New York Times served up a gushing review in January. And last month, GQ magazine named it one of the 13 best new restaurants in 2018 in America.
Now, Food & Wine magazine names Williams one of the Best New Chefs 2018 in America, writing:
“When you come here it’s like, ‘Just relax; we are going to take care of everything. No, we don’t have ketchup for your prime rib, but yes, it’s going to be OK.’”
Kate Williams is obsessed with the idea of tartare. It’s scrappy; it’s resourceful; it’s a whole lot more than the sum of its parts. And in exactly these ways, the dish also sums up the restaurant she’s built. Lady of the House is a no-waste kitchen, a place where produce “seconds” cultivated in urban farms arrive by the crate. It’s a place where citrus peels find new life in flavored syrups and apple cores cook down into sweet butter, where fish bones are scraped of every last morsel of meat and prime rib trim becomes, yes, tartare—paired with a brilliant surf-and-turf swoosh of smoked oyster aioli. You don’t need to know that Williams does most of her own butchery in-house to enjoy her perfect rosy slices of Parisian ham paired with sweet-spicy Dijon butter and chunky fermented honey, just as you don’t need to know that her mom hung the pineapple wallpaper and that some of the dainty china belonged to her grandmother to be blown away by the restaurant’s charm.
That Williams has done a lot with a little is part of the allure, and Motor City has shown up to support her. It helps that she’s one of their own, born and bred in the suburbs of Detroit with more than a century of personal history here in Corktown. Her paternal grandfather once lived just a few blocks away from the site of Lady of the House; her mom’s grandparents first met at the Gaelic League around the corner; her dad has memories of visiting the space in its former life as a sports bar. Lady of the House may be a gift to the city of Detroit from its native daughter, but what Williams has built resonates far outside the city limits.
Williams is among 10 chefs listed.
Her hit restaurant is at 1426 Baglkey Ave.
