At Gem, a Teen Wonder Plays in the Big Leagues

Flynn McGarry arrived in New York three years ago as the chef of a pop-up restaurant, Eureka. He was 16 at the time, but he’d been charging money for tasting menus since he was 13, running an early version of Eureka in his mother’s house in the San Fernando Valley in California. Earlier this year he opened a restaurant on the Lower East Side that is meant to be permanent, or as permanent as any business venture in Manhattan can be. This one is called Gem, which if nothing else proves he’s better at choosing names now that he’s 19.

I haven’t yet seen the new documentary about him, “Chef Flynn,” but over the past six years my media diet has not been lacking in news about Mr. McGarry’s productive adolescent years. I first learned about him from a brief New Yorker piece written when he was 13, by which time he had made many of the recipes in “The French Laundry Cookbook” and cooked for a week at Eleven Madison Park. He was working several days a week in a Los Angeles restaurant and had apprenticed at Next and Alinea by 15, when he was the subject of a Times Magazine article. When he moved himself and his pop-up to New York at 16, I read that his cooking was influenced by his time in the kitchens of Maaemo in Norway and Geranium in Denmark.

Still, as I walked into Gem the first time I was wondering, at some level, whether everyone had been too polite to tell him that his brownies needed more time in the oven.

Of course, it would be nice to have the answer to that before you buy advance tickets for the eight- to 12-course meal at $155 a person, the only way to reserve a seat. But it doesn’t take more than a few minutes at Gem to see that the adults weren’t just humoring Mr. McGarry. His cooking is nuanced, his plating is often lyrical and the flavors, at least this spring and summer, have been delicate, subtle and very fresh. The vegetables and fruits he uses in profusion look and taste as if they had dropped off the vine right on to the hand-spun, earth-toned ceramic dishes.

My favorite Gem dish so far, delicate and self-assured, was a morsel or two of grilled king crab legs lightly glazed with rose petal miso and set beside soft chamomile-scented potatoes for ballast, red currants for zing and some fluttering rose petals on top for the heck of it. A close rival was the chilled bowl of barely vinegared mackerel interwoven with grilled cucumbers, sliced plums and salty red dabs of mashed fermented plums. The harmonies were right on key, with a Japanese mood that didn’t cross the line into outright imitation.

White asparagus, an ingredient that seems to flummox some American kitchens, was subjected to a wonderful treatment, patiently browned and basted in butter, then finished with a reduced chicken jus that had a glimmer of vadouvan in it somewhere. Strewing the plate with tender, pale-green pine needles seemed like an affectation at first, but their flavor lifted and brightened the whole package.

Mr. McGarry does fine work with deeper flavors, too. Each menu crescendos in a complicated, multicomponent spread, and the best of these featured lamb: barbecue ribs rubbed with cracked coriander seeds and XO sauce, plus a skewered grilled lamb kebab and a tomato salad. Another night built up to an exhibition of squab. A leg, perfectly cooked and sweetened by a maple jus, was very good, but the high point was a very thin and hearty rye cracker spread with squab liver, cherries and pickled ramps; the fruit’s bright notes were played off against earthier ones so skillfully they almost shimmered.

Back in the family home, and at the Eureka pop-up, Mr. McGarry used to make everything himself. Now he works alongside two cooks, bringing the kitchen team at Gem to the same size as that of my neighborhood slice joint.

Some small defeats could be attributed to Mr. McGarry’s lack of experience with weather patterns in the Northeast. A warm beet, languorously braised in smoked beet juice until it is soft and sticky like salt water taffy and then basted with a beet-based bordelaise sauce, was impressive in June. In July’s heat wave it was as welcome as a space heater. And maybe he wouldn’t have served starchy grilled peas if he’d known how quickly the summer sun can make them tough.

By the way, Mr. McGarry doesn’t make brownies, at least not at Gem. Dessert after each of my three meals was more or less the same thing: bowls of ripe berries, served one night with whipped cream infused with chamomile and rose hips and another time with bay leaf and bee-pollen ice creams. You couldn’t ask for a more refreshing course on a hot summer night, but at the same time it’s clear that he has room to grow as a pastry chef.

Dessert is served on low coffee tables in a loungey space called the Living Room, which by day doubles as a cafe selling pastries and sandwiches on housemade bread. Rousting diners from their tables in the dining room (called, aptly enough, the Dining Room), probably seemed like a good idea on paper, but in reality it’s a bit silly.

It’s one of several hiccups that keep a meal at Gem from gliding smoothly along. Servers may shoot their cuffs before fiddling with some small detail of the table setting, a fussiness that is not in keeping with the graceful, relaxed tone of the cooking. Wine glasses could sit empty for long stretches and the wines themselves, both whites and reds, were almost always too warm.

That Mr. Flynn is more polished as a chef than a restaurateur is understandable. He may need a more experienced partner to straighten out the dining room, and to help him edit the menus, too. With each meal, I had the sense there were at least two superfluous courses, and occasionally Mr. McGarry seems to be straining as he reaches for the sort of razzle-dazzle you’d get at Alinea or Eleven Madison Park. An elaborate lobster course one night looked amazing, but wasn’t. An attempt at eggplant carnitas, with an underseasoned salsa of green strawberries and a charred, papery tortilla, was enough to make you wish Mr. McGarry had eaten more tacos before he left California.

At times Mr. McGarry seems like a creative-writing student who fills his pages with footnotes because David Foster Wallace did it. It’s too bad that he came of age in an era when many people believe that tasting menus are the highest form of kitchen artistry. Like the style of “Infinite Jest,” those menus have to be the result of ideas that can’t be contained any other way; they’re not a blank space to be filled in. Mr. McGarry obviously learned a lot from his mentors, but he can cook in his own voice now, and it may be time to leave his idols behind.

Follow NYT Food on Twitter and NYT Cooking on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest. Get regular updates from NYT Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice.