A collaboration between Mehmet Duzgun, Veysel Yildirim, Mehmet Yavuz, Denisse and her father, Executive Chef Juan González, The Gundis Kurdish Kitchen is where Kurdish cuisine and the talent of our Chef make their Chicago debut. Here, you can sip black tea and wine, and enjoy the robust flavors of a kitchen that celebrates and shares the diversity of the food and culture of Kurds.
Executive Chef, Juan M. González
For over 45 years Chef Gonzalez has worked in some of North America's most distinguished kitchens with cooks and cuisines from all over the globe.
He is a firm believer in working with local farms to enhance the robust, fresh flavors of our cuisine. Chef Gonzalez has built our menu by using indigenous methods of Kurdish cooking and the essential ingredients of Anatolian cuisine. Here, his team - made up of Kurds from Syria and Turkey - cook authentic and eclectic Mediterranean-Middle Eastern foods in our Kurdish kitchen.
From Palm Springs, to La Jolla, to Mexico - and now Chicago - he has led numerous culinary teams to create extraordinary dishes for the global food connoisseur.
His fine dining experience hails from extensive work as Head Cook and later Executive Chef, from the late 1990s and early 2000s, at The Vintage Club (Indian Wells, California), The Racquet Club (Palm Springs, California), and Hotel Coronado (La Jolla, California).
Today, he is the executive chef and co-owner of Los Olivos Restaurant in his home-state of Aguascalientes, Mexico, and plans to launch his next culinary endeavor in Palm Springs, California.
