David Danielson joined Churchill Downs as executive sous chef in 2011, elevating to executive chef two years later. Soon to celebrate his 10th anniversary at Churchill Downs during the 147th running of the Kentucky Derby on May 1, 2021, Danielson has guided a remarkable awakening at the country’s largest—and arguably most successful—sports and entertainment venue where food and fans are part of the spectacle.
Reflecting on his decade of experience, Danielson says “I’ve catered for and consulted with a number of large spectator events including the Olympics and the Super Bowl, but I’ve never seen anything like the Kentucky Derby. It may be the greatest two minutes on the field in sports. But there’s also a day-long social, food, and beverage aspect that you won’t find at any other sporting event. At Churchill Downs, we’ve turned the sports and entertainment industry on its head. Our job as a culinary team is to provide an exceptional experience at the level of fine dining for more than 160,000 people in a single day.”
And Derby Day is just a slice of the Churchill Downs pie.
Pastry Chef Pivot to Pari-mutuel Entertainer
In the realm of fascinating culinary stories, at first glance Danielson’s pathway to Churchill Downs seems straightforward. However, it has been anything but traditional for this energetic multi-tasker who confesses that he is a disrupter with a continuous improvement mindset. “If it’s not broken, break it and create something fresh and new!”
Many chefs are first inspired to cook in the kitchen of a family member. Danielson’s muse was his bread-baking Swedish grandmother in hometown Chicago. They watched Julia Child shows together on television. It’s where he learned the Swedish phrase lagom är bäst (“just the right amount” or “everything in moderation”) which is tattooed on his right forearm.
A humble first job as a teenager—washing dishes at a pastry shop—gave him a window into the world of French cooking. While not everyone would (or could) catapult from a local bakery to a French cooking school, Danielson’s entrepreneurial spirit and can-do-anything attitude was already in full force.
After graduating from the Dumas Pere L’École de la Cuisine Francaise in Glenview, Illinois, Danielson attended the École Hôtelier de Tain-l’Hermitage in France’s Northern Rhone wine region where he apprenticed at several Michelin-starred restaurants. His extensive resume is lined with an impressive array of cooking stints at big-name properties including the Ritz Carlton, Rockefeller Center, and the United Nations Plaza Hotel in New York, and Charlie Trotter’s and the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago.
After returning to Chicago in 2001, Danielson immediately set out to amplify his natural tendency to multi-task. He joined the Chicago chapter of the Chaîne des Rôtisseurs and served as its Conseiller Culinaire for six years. He launched a catering company. He created a consulting company to lend his culinary expertise to major sports and entertainment events including PGA Championships, U.S. Open Tennis Tournament, Super Bowl, Lollapalooza, and the GRAMMY Awards.
Danielson’s big win, the event that turned his head toward the next-gen version of his future, was the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Passion for large global events was locked in and destined to become his stock-in-trade.
Several years later, an opportunity to sell his catering company meant that Danielson was free to explore new opportunities. That’s when he heard about the opening for an executive sous chef at Churchill Downs. Levy Restaurants, a Chicago-based restaurant and hospitality company specializing in managing food and beverage programs for major sports and entertainment venues, sent him to Louisville right before the 2011 Kentucky Derby. “I came down to visit and really fell in love with the city.”
Culinary Art: “It’s all about the food and the experience.”
Emphasizing his quest for amazing guest experiences, Danielson is fond of saying that “great chefs have the ability to make people stop for a second and think about what they’re eating. When I started cooking, I realized there is magic in being a chef. We have the ability to bring people together, to make them stop and think, and that was an amazing thing for me. It’s powerful and rewarding.”
With supportive backing from the Churchill Downs Corporation, Chef Danielson and his team can ideate, play with new concepts, create and test them, and learn by doing. “Great food and great experiences are at the forefront of what we do.”
At Churchill Downs, Chef Danielson works to create the magic of breaking bread together across the property’s many venues throughout the year. Derby Day is, of course, the centerpiece. Danielson explains, “Unlike other big sporting events where you grab your food and sit down to watch the event, the people who attend the Derby spend an entire day with us for a two-minute race. The Derby experience goes way beyond the sport itself. There is no other sporting event like this.”
When Danielson apprenticed in France, he began to take seasonality for granted in designing menus. Returning stateside to New York, where it is possible to buy almost any food item every day, that soft illusion continued. Back in the Midwest, however, the farm-to-table dining trend had not yet hit its stride.
Danielson says, “When I moved to Kentucky, I was reminded of France, and very intentionally looked for seasonality in the region’s culture and history.” His menus and dining experiences honor and reflect his new Kentucky home. Partnerships with local farmers make it possible to tell the story and deliver comfy experiences to guests.
Monumental Farm-to-Table Dining: Innovation in Scaling Up for Events
If a recipe works for one person, or even for a dozen, will it work for 160,000 people? Chef Danielson’s process for finding the middle ground between fine dining and concession snacks is both intriguing and replicable. His guiding mantra: “put the money where it counts, in food and guest experiences.”
Here’s how Chef Danielson and his team create new menus every year for Derby Day (and other racing and holiday events). This attention to detail is one of Churchill Downs’ brand promises.
New menu items are tasted by different groups within the Churchill Downs family—board members, the culinary team, servers, etc.—before deciding which items will go on that year’s menu board. There are both qualitative and quantitative elements to the test. Did you like it, and why (or why not)? That’s an important data point. But because most food is served buffet style at Churchill Downs, Chef Danielson can quite literally measure how much people like each dish. Serving vessels are weighed before and after tasting meals to determine which dishes should move on to the next stage, which is scaling up for a large crowd.
Most chefs probably do not have to be proficient at using Excel spreadsheets. At Churchill Downs, it’s a must-have basic skill. Every ingredient of every recipe is scaled up from its original serving count to 160,000 portions. These spreadsheets form the “brain” for buying ingredients and preparing each recipe. Every kitchen has venue- and menu-specific spreadsheets clearly posted on the wall for the team. Over time, Chef Danielson has digitized recipes so that any employee can access them on demand using smart phones or other mobile devices.
Then comes the challenge of preparing such a large volume of food at scale so that the result is as tasty as the original “normal” recipe serving. The spreadsheets and digital recipes are a big advantage. In addition, some 60 CVap (controlled vapor) ovens ensure that protein dishes are cooked to the proper temperature and held in that state until time to serve them. This technology was actually invented in Kentucky by Colonel Sanders for Kentucky Fried Chicken. Many chefs use CVap ovens, but typically need only one.
Time is always of the essence for fresh food. Imagine how much time it takes to cook 7,000 pounds of pasta in order to replenish that item on a buffet. With a simple problem-solving innovation using jet-flame burners and woks, Danielson trimmed seven hours in a big vat to seven minutes in a wok. And that’s just one example of how he has used technology to improve cooking processes.
Renaissance Man
Figuring out how to turn the cogwheel of Churchill Downs would be enough of a challenge for most people. But not Chef David Danielson.
2018 was a big year even for a guy who always has many projects going at the same time (in addition to his full-time job) to fuel his creative juices. It was the year he launched The Old Stone Inn and Tavern in a 200-year-old building. Why? “I wanted to get back in a restaurant kitchen myself and bring history to life by telling the story of this beautiful building.” Unfortunately, the restaurant closed in March 2020 due to the pandemic and because Danielson’s adaptive skills and leadership focus were needed at Churchill Downs to prepare for the first-ever postponed Kentucky Derby (which eventually took place with no spectators on September 5, 2020).
Danielson also published a cookbook in 2018 with co-author Tim Laird, the now-retired CEO of Brown-Forman. Edward Lee, chef/owner of Louisville’s 610 Magnolia restaurant, wrote the forward for “The Bourbon Country Cookbook. New Southern Entertaining: 95 Recipes and More from a Modern Kentucky Kitchen.”
Chef Danielson has several rashers of new ideas cooking for his 10th anniversary in 2021 and, if all goes well, the 147thKentucky Derby and Oaks on April 30/May 1. While details are still being sorted out, and back-up plans generated for the possibility of another COVID-related interruption, this year’s innovation will be all-inclusive food and event tickets. Guests will be able to visit any number of socially distanced food stations spread throughout the property. (Premium ticket holders will continue to access reserved venues but may also explore new food concepts in other parts of the property.) This strategy is certain to create a “wow” factor, once again assuring that Churchill Downs remains fresh and engaging for its guests.
Matt Winn’s Steakhouse
Matt Winn’s Steakhouse is stunning testament to Chef Danielson’s tenacity and creativity. It also speaks volumes about Churchill Downs’ trust in his leadership and judgement.
Remarkably, the new restaurant opened on July 29, 2020, in the midst of the COVID pandemic with no apparent sacrifice to quality, charm, or ingenuity from the health and safety measures built into its design. Unlike other race-day venues at Churchill Downs, Matt Winn’s is open to the public for dinner four days a week, Wednesday through Saturday.
Who was Matt Winn? Perhaps the most important person ever associated with the history of Churchill Downs. Chef Danielson channeled Winn’s spirit as an innovator and change agent to create the new steakhouse.
A young Matt Winn attended the very first Kentucky Derby race in 1875, when he was only 14 years old, and every race thereafter until his passing in 1949. In an era when the popularity of horse racing was faltering, Winn established many enduring Derby traditions including the official Mint Julep glass, the Derby Trophy, and the epic garland of roses bestowed upon the winning Derby horse. “Room 20,” Winn’s private room for drinking and gambling at the track, has been faithfully recreated within the new restaurant.
The steakhouse strikes a perfect balance between Winn’s traditions and Chef Danielson’s sparkling modern influence. Upon entering the restaurant, guests get a stunning visual introduction to the restaurant’s extensive Bourbon offerings, including the Corti Brothers’ Van Winkle Special Reserve from the 1960s and 70s, among the rarest Bourbons in the world.
The carefully curated wine list offers nearly 700 bottles of excellent international offerings, including a robust by-the-glass program.
Guests can choose between a Chef’s Tasting Menu or a dinner menu rooted in Kentucky specialties with a French twist. Borrowing from the Michelin-star restaurant tradition of gueridon service, enthusiastic tableside servers present three custom-designed trolleys for charcuterie, seafood, and delectable desserts.
Churchill Downs VIP Parking Gate
750 Central Avenue
Louisville, KY 40208
(502) 636-4888
Reservations on OpenTable
Links
Matt Winn’s Steakhouse https://mattwinnsteakhouse.com
Churchill Downs https://www.churchilldowns.com/ and https://www.churchilldownsincorporated.com/
Levy Restaurants http://www.levyrestaurants.com/
The Bourbon Country Cookbook: https://atasteofkentucky.com/product/the-bourbon-country-cookbook/ or amazon.com
[…] available for fine dining Wednesday through Saturday evenings. Chef Danielson takes a bow in the spotlight of the international gastronomy society Chaîne des […]