Fidelity Hotel Chef Daniel Young Returns to Cleveland After Professional Journeys and Personal Tragedy

Daniel Young Credit: Courtesy Fidelity Hotel

Like most skilled chefs, Daniel Young spent much of his career moving from kitchen to kitchen, city to city, sharpening his skills while gaining exposure to multiple cuisines, systems and mentors. Restaurants provided Young not only with a dependable career path but also a safety net for when things went south – and south they went.

“Every bad thing I’ve been through in my life, the kitchen has been the one thing that I can always rely on – even if it sucks sometimes,” says Young.

Young was called to the kitchen at an early age. As a kid growing up in Kirtland, he took a job as a dishwasher at a tavern within walking distance of home. While still in high school, he landed a job as a line cook at another local tavern, where he quickly outpaced his co-workers and rose to kitchen manager.

Young was taking classes at Lakeland Community College when he had his first existential crisis.

“What am I doing with my life,” he pondered. “I thought, if I’m going to be a chef for the rest of my life, I better start cooking for talented people.”

Young’s first “real” cooking gig was at Flour, where he was exposed to professional chefs who took their jobs seriously. A year or so into that job, the young cook arrived at another crossroads.

“I went on a very Kerouacian road trip around the country for three months trying to decide what I wanted to do,” he explains.

Nearing the end of his northbound trek on the 101 to Seattle, Young started pinging friends and former coworkers back home about possible restaurant positions. By the time he pulled into Cleveland there was a job waiting for him at Lolita in Tremont.

“At the time, Lolita was the restaurant that, if you wanted to learn how to cook, those were the people you wanted to work for,” he says.

Young was quickly working his way up the ladder until Sunday, January 10, 2016, when a fire decimated the restaurant. The hood-cleaning company failed to replace the spark arrester, a metal screen that prevents burning particles from escaping, and 20 minutes into the chef’s morning prep, fire was licking the ceilings and smoke was pouring out of the vents.

“I don’t throw around the term PTSD too often, but to this day when a fire alarm goes off, I’m shook,” he says.

Young shifted to Lola on East 4th Street before moving down the block to help Michael Symon open Mabel’s BBQ, where the chef discovered a love of live-fire cooking.

“I immediately had an affinity for smoking meats, figuring out how to serve that amount of barbecue to that many people,” he states. “The answer is: the fire never goes out.”

Around that time, Symon and partner Doug Petkovic were preparing to open a second Mabel’s in Las Vegas. As it turns out, Young and his future wife already were getting itchy for their next adventure.

“Emily and I hit a point in our lives where we knew we wanted to get out of Cleveland and do something different, and that’s when Doug asked me to move to Las Vegas,” he says.

As glamorous as “living at The Palms” might sound, the pair quickly began looking ahead. Each drafted a short list of dream cities, and the closest match was Portland, ME. In short order, Emily landed a great job at L.L. Bean and Young snagged the chef de cuisine position at Fore Street, where he worked for James Beard Award-winning chef and farm-to-table pioneer Sam Hayward. That restaurant relies exclusively on food provided by local farmers, fishermen and foragers, the menu starts from scratch every single day, and all food is cooked on a wood-fired grill or in a wood-fired oven.

“That job defined my career in a lot of ways, but that being said, it was the hardest job I ever had,” Young recalls. “After three and half years, my body was destroyed, I was drinking too much, working way too much. I wasn’t the best version of myself anymore.”

Once again, change came calling and the couple, now newlyweds, travelled halfway across the country to colorful Colorado.

“We got deep into mountain climbing while we were in Maine and we wanted to chase bigger peaks, more adventure,” Young explains. “Denver has that perfect mix of hospitality, hotels and nature in your backyard.”

Young didn’t simply change cities, he altered his career path, sidestepping fine-dining restaurants for a boutique hotel – a different side of the hospitality industry. Before long, Young was overseeing three separate dining venues in the property along with banquet and catering.

While in Colorado, the couple spent much of their free time climbing “13ers,” peaks that top out above 13,000 feet. Last August, Emily went on a weekend climb in the remote Holy Cross Wilderness region near Vail. She missed her nightly check-in.
“She missed a lot of check-ins, so I didn’t panic too much until I didn’t hear from her by the middle of the night,” Young shares.

Vail Search and Rescue found Emily’s body two and a half days later.

“If I didn’t decide to get sober last year, knowing now what was going to happen the following summer – and deciding to stay sober – I would not be sitting here right now,” Young says.

After running away to Mexico “to eat tacos for two months,” Young returned home to Cleveland this past fall, where he accepted the executive chef position at the new Fidelity Hotel downtown.

“The kitchen gives me a sense of peace,” he reflects. “There’s a structure to it. You come in every day, you turn the shit on, you do what you gotta do, you’re forced to communicate with people, and then clean it all up and go home. The next day is the next day.”

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