I run live-fire kitchens that chase flavor over flash — sourcing obsessively, training relentlessly, and sending out plates that taste like where they came from.
Kitchen focus
I started in a dish pit at sixteen. By nineteen I was on the line. The kitchen taught me everything school couldn't — discipline, timing, and how to taste with intention.
A menu is a promise. I build mine around what's actually good that week, not what looks good on paper — which means the dish changes before my ego does.
Walk the farms and the docks before writing a single line of the menu.
Test a dish a dozen times before it's allowed anywhere near a guest.
Cut every ingredient that isn't earning its place on the plate.
Build the plate like it has to survive being looked at for ten seconds.
Get it to the table hot, fast, and exactly as tasted in the kitchen.
Keep scrolling — each course rises onto the pass, holds for service, then clears for the next.
Built and run a live-fire tasting-menu restaurant in Charleston, earning a Michelin star within six years of opening.
Took over a struggling bistro kitchen and rebuilt it around seasonal, farm-direct sourcing and a tighter, sharper menu.
Trained across the sauce, grill, and garde manger stations under classical French discipline.
Institute of Culinary Education
2009
Paris, France
2010
National Restaurant Assoc.
2014
James Beard Foundation
2022
Marchetti cooks like the fire is part of the recipe, not just the method. Cinder is the most exciting tasting menu in Charleston, full stop.
He rebuilt Verjus from the walk-in out. Every supplier call, every prep list — within a year it was the kitchen everyone wanted to work in.
I've eaten at Cinder eleven times. The menu changes, the standard never does. That's the rarest thing in this business.
A residency, a pop-up, a consulting project, or just a table for two — send a message and I'll reply within a day.