Billy Grant’s philosophy of exceptional food comes from the basics instilled early on as a child working beside both his father and uncle in the family’s restaurants. Billy’s passion for hard work and innovative cuisine and his superior confidence in the kitchen are evident in each menu item. “As long as it is simple, honest, and fresh-then I’m happy," says Grant. Billy’s capacity to make remarkably simple food intensely flavorful demonstrates his sincere understanding and passion for food and culinary arts.

Today, Grant is the chef/owner of Restaurant Bricco and Grant’s in West Hartford. Both restaurants are enormously popular and appeal to anyone who loves to eat. He believes that each ingredient carries an individual responsibility that inevitably contributes to the success of the entire dish and works to marry the food accordingly. With a long list of accolades and awards from Connecticut’s top publications, his most valued are from the many charities to which he contributes time. In October 2005, he was invited as a guest chef to Washington, D.C. for the "Share Our Strength" dinner benefiting the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Restaurant critics, food writers, and loyal customers all agree and give Billy Grant’s cooking the highest of recommendations. BillyGrant.com

Noel Jones started working in the kitchen of a fine French restaurant at the age of 14 and realized early that he had a love for the craft. Inspired by his mother, who was the maitre d', he responded well to the high standards that were expected of him and the rest of the staff. He credits his uncles, who were both executive chefs at leading restaurants, with taking him under their wings at a young age and guiding him through his early career. In fact, one uncle was a lecturer for hotel management whose counsel was sought after throughout Europe. "They were my mentors, and taught me that the most important aspects of cooking were respect for ingredients, integrity, and discipline," he says.

Having graduated at the top of his class in culinary school in Ireland, Noel has worked on both sides of the Atlantic. He worked his way up through the ranks to become chef tournant at the Hotel Europe. In addition, he was executive chef of the Limetree in Kenmare, which earned a Michelin rating during his tenure. He was also a member of the Panel of Chefs Ireland. In 2005, he was inducted into the Les Amis d'Escoffier Society.

Prior to joining The Polytechnic Club, Noel was corporate executive chef at the United Technologies Companies. A firm believer in using his talents to support the community,  Noel has represented The Polytechnic Club at a number of charity events such as The Celebration of Connecticut Farms, Hartford's Taste of the Nation for Share Our Strength, CPTV's Celebrity Chefs, and Artworks' 30th anniversary celebration.

In keeping with The Polytechnic Club's credo of excellence, Chef Noel provides the Hartford area with stellar cuisine, the likes of which is generally found in New York City and other cosmopolitan areas. Through training and experience, he is grounded in the classic technique of European cooking. With this important foundation, Noel works with modern culinary technology to present artful and delicious dishes.  

A true professional, Noel is also a gastronomic explorer, continuously experimenting with new flavors and new techniques to bring excitement to each dish he presents before his guests. His passion for culinary creativity is neatly summed up in his philosophy: "Take classic cuisine and use it as a springboard for the imagination to create new dishes." PolytechnicClub.com

Hunter Morton entered his first kitchen at the age of 18, an apprenticeship of sorts, at the Breckenridge Inn in Breckenridge, Colorado, and was introduced to a culinary world that captivated him.  After three years of touring a variety of kitchens and learning from his peers, Hunter’s aspiration to learn more guided him to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. During his schooling, he worked an externship at The Little Nell in Aspen, Colorado, working under renowned Chef George Mahaffey. At this luxury resort, Hunter cooked with regional meats and produce to create the restaurant’s Alpine-style cuisine. 
 
Upon graduation in 1995, Hunter signed on with celebrity Chef Emeril Lagasse at his NOLA Restaurant in the French Quarter of New Orleans. At NOLA, working with some of the country’s finest chefs, Hunter learned how to prepare top-notch food in a high-volume, fast-paced environment.
 
With the rising popularity of Northwest cuisine and a yearning to learn more about American wines, Hunter moved west to Oregon. As the executive chef at the award-winning McCully House Inn in Jacksonville, Hunter earned accolades for his cooking in both Gourmet and Sunset.
 
After two years, Hunter’s desire to work with fine wines and prominent chefs drove him south to Napa Valley, where he worked as a line cook under Chef Robert Curry at Domaine Chandon. Shortly thereafter, Hunter was promoted to chef de cuisine and helped Curry create one of the Napa Valley’s most opulent menus. Working with some of the finest ingredients in the country, Hunter was constantly challenged to create a menu that would achieve harmony with Chandon’s portfolio of still and sparkling wines. Upon Chef Curry’s departure in April 2002, Hunter stepped up as the interim chef for Domaine Chandon, successfully maintaining the high standards of excellence for which Chandon has always been known.
 
Next, Hunter worked for one of Napa Valley’s most demanding chefs, Richard Reddington, at the highly-acclaimed Auberge de Soleil. He worked at this Relais & Chateaux property for a brief time while anticipating the opening of Angèle, a new bistro by restaurateur Claude Rouas. Hunter gained the invaluable experience of seeing what it takes to open a restaurant from kitchen design to menu execution.
 
With this experience under his belt, Hunter was called by one of his old Chandon teammates to help revitalize the kitchen at Brix Restaurant in Yountville. Once renowned for its Asian-style cuisine, Brix was ready for a transformation. Hunter played the lead role in creating a menu that was more reflective of the relationship of food and wine in Napa Valley. In addition to his philosophy of integrating seasonal and indigenous food into the menu, he worked to raise the overall quality of kitchen standards.  As a result, food sales remained consistently high and Brix experienced several record-breaking months of sales.

Mundell began his trade at 17 at Tucson’s award-winning Southwestern restaurant, Café TerraCotta, where acclaimed Chef, Donna Nordin was impressed enough with the young chef to pay for his tuition at The Scottsdale Culinary Institute.

It used to be that a chef was a master of culinary technique; trained in the classic ways of gastronomy and expert at presenting traditional meals.  Chef Bobby Mundell, like Simmer, is a refreshing twist on the familiar. He never forgets that when you get right down to it, it’s just cooking and it has to taste wonderful.

Mundell is a talented chef, passionate about his craft and dedicated to serving delicious fare, but he can also just as easily be found downloading music to cook to on his I-Pod or creating a complicated daily food-cost analysis spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel.

Mundell considers himself to be a New Millennium Chef. At Simmer Restaurant Mundell takes familiar dishes and breathes new life into them.  For example, Mom’s meatloaf becomes Meatloaf Wellington with Foie Gras, and down-home Mac & Cheese morphs into Seafood Macaroni and Cheese in a delicate four-cheese sauce with an entire lobster tail and claw, sea scallops and jumbo shrimp. Mundell’s “Global Comfort Food” wakes up the taste buds and warms the soul. Since Simmer’s March 2005 opening, Mundell’s cuisine has received critical acclaim including Best New Restaurant in January’s Connecticut Magazine.

Throughout his tenured career, Chef Mundell has kept himself on the cutting edge in terms of emerging technology and culinary trends.  He seamlessly incorporates both of these into his life and his work.  Being a chef has a whole new meaning today than even ten years ago.  The chef is a personality, a cost manager, a designer, a menu engineer, and a taste bud delighter. Bobby Mundell is all of these things, and will continue to take his craft to the next level.

Bobby Mundell’s career has taken him across the country and back again. Before being recruited to Connecticut by the owners of Simmer for its March 2005 opening, he was most recently the Chef/Owner of rezzo, a classic Italian eatery in Lafayette, Colorado.

Mundell was also Vice President and managing partner at one of the nation's top restaurant groups-- Fox Restaurant Concepts from 2000-03.  He was assigned to the company’s new flagship restaurant--Bloom, outside Boulder, CO.  The company, then based in Tucson, Arizona, brought Mundell on-board for his creativity, knowledge of excellent ingredients, and proven ability to control expenses.  Mundell’s expertise was instrumental in making Bloom become the success it is today.  While at Bloom, his cuisine was awarded praise from restaurant critics throughout the Denver metro area and he and his recipes were featured newspapers and prestigious magazines.

In November 2002, Mundell appeared on the Food Network’s “Food Nation with Bobby Flay.”  The seven-minute segment featured Flay and Mundell fly-fishing in a Colorado stream, and then grilling trout, and serving up other delicacies streamside.

From 1997-2000, Mundell honed his craft as Chef de Cuisine under celebrity chef Bobby Flay.  Mundell is credited with improving Mesa Grill’s offerings and profitability while maintaining high quality standards.

Christopher Prosperi is chef and co-owner of Metro Bis restaurant in the affluent Hartford suburb of Simsbury, Connecticut which is the highest ranked restaurant in the state for American food according to the Zagat Survey. The New York Times also declared that “Metro Bis is worth a detour.” Chris is a weekly recipe columnist for the Hartford Courant and his work regularly appears across the country via the Tribune wire service.

He travels extensively each year teaching cooking classes and composing multi-course dinners which promote his easy and innovative form of American bistro cooking at venues including the Epcot Food and Wine Festival at Disney World (Orlando, FL), The Chef’s Holidays at Yosemite (Yosemite, CA), Justin Vineyards Guest Chef Series (Paso Robles, CA), The Nantucket Wine Festival (Nantucket, MA), The Book & The Cook (Philadelphia, PA), and the Scottsdale Culinary Festival (Scottsdale, AZ) to name a few. In the fall of 2006 Chris will be acting as a guest chef on a Bike Riders excursion to Italy and in the spring of 2007 he will be a featured instructor at La Combe en Périgord cooking school in France as well as a guest chef in the southern Caribbean on a SilverSeas cruise.

Chris is a regular bi-weekly guest on the local NBC affiliate and has also appeared throughout the country on radio and television programs such as WNBC “Today in New York”, “The Food & Wine Radio Network with Jennifer English”, “Cook’s Table with Jim Coleman”, and “Channel 12 News.” Chris has also acted as guest co-host on the “Food Smooze” on Connecticut’s NPR with Faith Middleton. He conducts local cooking classes at Sur La Table, Mystic Cooking School, Delia: The Viking Home Kitchen Showcase, and The Silo Cooking School. Chris’ recipes have been included in “Wife of the Chef: The True Story of a Restaurant and Romance” (Clarkson Potter Publishers, 2003) by Courtney Febbroriello (his wife), “Food Lover’s Guide to Connecticut” (Globe Pequot Press, 2003) by Patricia Brooks and Lester Brooks, “The Tomato Festival Cookbook” (Storey Books, 2004) by Lawrence Davis-Hollander, “Diabetes Cookbook for Dummies, 2nd Edition” (Wiley, 2005) by Alan L. Rubin, “For The Love of Food: Recipes and Stories From The Chefs of the IACP” (FRP, 2005), and “Best American Recipes 2005-2006” (Houghton Mifflin, 2005) edited by Fran McCullough and Molly Stevens.

Chris is a member of The American Chef Federation, the Society de Philanthropic, the Association of Food Journalists, La Chaine des Rotisseurs, the James Beard Foundation (where he does annual dinners), and the International Association of Culinary Professionals where he serves on the executive committee for cookbook award judging. He graduated second in his class at the Culinary Institute of America and has an expanding product line under the “Prosperi” label that currently includes three salad dressings. Chris’ passion for food is evident as "the holy joy of creation literally lights up his face as he works the stove."