Chef Zachary Engel has always done things a little differently, from the bold chances he takes on his menu to the innovative way he manages his team. These chances have clearly paid off. Zachary is the executive chef and co-owner of Galit and Cafe Yaya in Chicago. He is also the winner of multiple James Beard Awards, recipient of a Michelin star, and a seasoned world traveler.
Zachary had already compiled an impressive list of achievements by 2019, when he launched Galit to immediate critical acclaim in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. And just last year, Zachary opened Cafe Yaya directly next door. Obviously, Zachary is a busy guy, so we were honored that we had a chance to sit down with him at this year’s UTILITY Show in Chicago.
Zachary joined co-hosts Claudia Saric and Spencer Michiel for a special taping of So You Want To Run a Restaurant in front of a live audience. He gave us a candid look at the restaurant scene in Chicago and showed us what it really means to create career development opportunities for people who work in restaurants.
In May 2026, the Back of House team made our annual trek to the massive National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago. You can check out the highlights from our visit here. While we were there, we also had a chance to be a part of the programming at the nearby UTILITY Show.
“The UTILITY Show is not your average restaurant trade show,” Spencer explained during the live interview. “Created by the team behind chef apparel brand TILIT NYC, the UTILITY Show is smaller and more intimate than many other trade shows, which allows for a really engaged crowd and a focused conversation with our guest.”
The UTILITY Show featured all kinds of forward-thinking food offerings, cookware, and restaurant tech. So Chef Zachary’s uniquely forward-thinking approach to running his restaurants was a perfect fit.
A lot of the chefs we chat with tell us that they first fell in love with cooking in the family kitchen, usually under the tutelage of their mother, their grandfather, or an uncle with a passion for fresh ingredients. Not Zachary. He learned to cook strictly for survival.
Zachary confided, “My mom will find out about this, and she’ll give me a hard time. But I always had to fend for myself as a kid because my parents aren't very good cooks.”
So it wasn’t until Zachary left for college at Tulane in New Orleans that he really found his passion for cooking.
“It was one year after Hurricane Katrina, and it was a very interesting time to be there,” Zachary recalled. Hurricane Katrina was a devastating 2005 storm that left 80% of New Orleans underwater. The city’s rich culture, colorful communities, and diverse hospitality industry played an essential part in rebuilding New Orleans. Zachary suddenly found himself at the center of that culture.
“I started to go out and eat at restaurants, and I really fell in love with the hospitality and the heart and soul of New Orleans restaurants,” Zachary explained. It was also at Tulane that he met fellow student and future Galit Director of Operations Andrés Clavero.
Zachary may have fallen in love with cooking and connected with his future partner in New Orleans, but he traveled widely for his training. After college, Zachary took up stints at some of the best rated restaurants in the world from Zahav in Philadelphia to Catit in Tel Aviv to the Michelin-starred Madrona Manor in California wine country.
By the time he was ready to open his own restaurant, Zachary was an experienced chef with a clear vision. He ultimately chose Chicago for Galit because he saw an opening for a Middle Eastern restaurant driven by locally-sourced ingredients. In those early days, Zachary was mostly focused on building partnerships and keeping it simple.
“One of my chefs at the time was very connected to a lot of the farmers and helped introduce me, which is big,” Zachary pointed out. “You have to have credibility with these folks so they’ll agree to work with you. Beyond that, we were just trying to build on things that I’d already done — finding the next evolution, but not taking it too far”
Fortunately, Galit was an immediate hit. As Zachary recalled, “There were other restaurants that were doing Middle Eastern food in Chicago. But we had some really great reviews from some critics early on. We started to see a huge influx of guests, and our first year was pretty bangarang.”
That’s when Zachary decided it was time to take some chances.
“We decided to push the envelope a little bit more,” Zachary told us. “We created a four-course menu and from there it's evolved a lot.”
A big part of that evolution was learning how to serve fresh, local, seasonal dishes all year long in a city that gets extremely cold during the winter months. As Zachary explained, “We’re still very focused on buying ingredients from farmers – our protein, all of our produce, our greens, etc. But we also started to stockpile things so we could have some of the same stuff in the off season.”
A lot of times, this means being creative about how you use the ingredients in your stockpile. As Zachary told us, “We’ve built up ingredients that are consistently used throughout the year. We just maybe move those ingredients from one recipe to a totally different recipe, but using the same ramp vinegar or preserved plums or something like that.”
When it comes to taking chances, the wine list is where Galit really stands out. And when we say taking chances, we’re not exaggerating. As Zachary explained, “We have a wine made from grapes that are smuggled out of Iran and made in Armenia.”
Galit also has a full cellar of wines from Middle Eastern vintners in places like Israel’s Golan Heights and the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. Zachary pointed out that the winemaking cultures of the Middle East are underappreciated in Western cuisine.
Galit was extremely focused right from the beginning on changing that. He told us, “Early on, we were meeting with wine reps, and we said ‘We're going to have Middle Eastern wine on the list. Don't bring us Greek or Italian wine to our tastings.’”
The wine reps were skeptical enough to bring Greek and Italian wines to the tastings anyway. So it took a few tries to get them on board. But “Once people realized that we knew what we were talking about, and there was great wine in the Middle East that was being made, we just had to find a way to get it.”
As Zachary’s restaurant took more chances in that first year, they quickly found that their customers were receptive to trying new things. Everything was going great.
“Then COVID happened,” Zachary noted. “So we just started putting the same stuff in takeout boxes.”
That quick pivot would open a whole new door once COVID passed and restaurants reopened. It soon became obvious to Zachary that there was enough demand to add a new revenue stream…and a whole new restaurant.
“We needed a private event space. We needed to be able to do catering. We needed to add to what Galit was already doing,” Zachary told us. “And so Yaya is a sister restaurant and it's directly next door. Now I lead two teams that provide a different experience because Galit is now a special occasion restaurant.”
While Zachary fell in love with the craft and the atmosphere at the restaurants where he worked, he acknowledged “There wasn't what people call work-life balance. But Andres and I went to business school at Tulane. So we understood the way the corporate business world works and the perks that people who work a nine-to-five, white-collar job get.”
Zachary wanted a restaurant where his employees had access to the same opportunities. This is why Galit and Cafe Yaya have done away with the traditional tipping, replacing it with an automatic 20% service charge. This charge is used to help fund education, training, healthcare, and more for Zachary’s employees.
Galit explains the reasoning behind their service charge in extensive detail on their own website. As Zachary told us, “We were trying to implement those benefits in tandem with treating the workplace in a professional way — from interviewing and evaluations to education and training.”
Zachary recognized that there are challenges to this approach. He noted that “it's not always easy. We try to set an example so that people can try one or two things. I would say start with one benefit, like health insurance, but you have to figure out what works for you.”
While Galit and Cafe Yaya are thriving, Zachary admitted that running two restaurants side by side does have its challenges. The beauty of the location is that “I can be in both, kind of at the same time,” Zachary told us.
But of course, there are drawbacks to this approach. As Zachary noted, “Sometimes it feels like when I need to spend time in one restaurant, the other one is unraveling at a rapid pace. Being able to manage my time and put the energy in with as many people as I can is very difficult to do.”
Still, Zachary remains focused on the human aspects of the business.
“Identities don't matter when you're at the table,” Zach observed. “There’s a humanization that happens when you're sitting at the table and sharing food with people. It makes it so much clearer that there's just a lot of noise in the world that has nothing to do with human to human interaction.”
At the end of the day, it’s all about providing a setting and experience where people can connect, and if that requires Zachary to be in two places at once, it’s worth the effort.
This is a challenge that a lot of restaurant owners and chefs can certainly relate to — whether you’re running one busy kitchen or a growing restaurant group. That’s why we always recommend getting a little extra help. Maybe you can’t actually be in two places at once. But the right technology can take a lot of tasks off your plate so that, above all else, you can focus on having those human to human interactions.
Not sure where to start?
Schedule your free, personalized consultation with one of our in-house restaurant tech experts and we’ll figure it out together.