Grace Cacciato is the senior sous chef at Saga in New York City, where she works alongside chef Charlie Mitchell. Drawn to cooking from an early age, Cacciato traces much of her culinary identity to the women in her family, whose recipes connected her to generations she never had the chance to meet. Today, those early influences inform a cooking philosophy rooted in flavor, continual learning, and the responsibility to pass knowledge on to others.
Cacciato knew from childhood that she wanted to cook professionally. Her mother, Annie, encouraged that interest and taught her the value of hard work, while family recipes taught Cacciato to see food as a connection to the past. She grew up cooking from church cookbooks, torn recipe cards, and Post-it notes, including Greek dishes that earlier generations had adapted to ingredients they could find and grow in rural Ohio.
At Saga, Cacciato has found a similar emphasis on constant improvement under her mentor, chef Charlie Mitchell. She describes her approach as “flavor over flair” and considers satisfying the diner the ultimate measure of whether she's done her job correctly. Her ambitions at the two-Michelin-starred restaurant are equally direct: “For now, my only focus is being awarded three Michelin stars at Saga.”
Cacciato is returning to the S.Pellegrino Young Chef Academy Competition as a 2026-27 U.S. Regional Finalist after previously competing as a U.S. Regional Finalist in 2022-23. She sees competition cooking as a different discipline from restaurant work, requiring its own kind of practice, attention, and performance. Advancing to the global final, she says, would give her an opportunity to represent women in the industry and New York City's restaurant community, “because we are the best in the country.”
Cacciato’s signature dish for the 2026-27 competition brings those influences together in roasted squab with black raspberry, Swiss chard, toasted buckwheat, chanterelle mushrooms, and ginger sabayon. She changed direction on the dish after her great-aunt sent her a photo of a black raspberry bush growing behind her house, which reminded Cacciato of picking the berries as a child and using them to make pies with her aunt or grandmother. The dish also draws on her work at Saga: toasted buckwheat, chanterelles, and ginger reinterpret the restaurant’s variations on dirty rice, while a bordelaise showcases the traditional sauce work she practices in the kitchen.
