Mehdi Brunet-Benkritly Leaves Fedora and Bar Sardine This Week to Move to Montreal

Mehdi Brunet-Benkritly, the executive chef at Fedora and Bar Sardine, is leaving Gabe Stulman's West Village restaurant empire to move back to his native Montreal where he will open his own restaurant. Brunet-Benkritly has been with Stulman's company, Happy Cooking Hospitality, for four years. He's been at the helm of the always-charming Fedora since Stulman revamped and reopened it in 2011, and has also been the chef and partner at Bar Sardine (fka Chez Sardine) since the beginning, even through its transformation from offbeat izakaya to neighborhood bar. He will be replaced by the longtime chef de cuisine of both restaurants, Matt Griffin, who came to the company four years ago, after working at Rick Moonen's RM Seafood in Las Vegas and New York's temple to seafood Le Bernardin. Brunet-Benkritly's last day with the restaurants is this Friday.

Brunet-Benkritly is actually the second chef to leave both the Stulman empire and the city in recent months. Chef Michael Toscano left the group back in November, to move to Charleston.