Every Wood River Valley resident has a story explaining how they came to call the central mountains of Idaho home. For some, they were born and raised here. Others, at various stages of life, sought out the beauty, adventure and solitude of mountain living. Not so many can say they stumbled upon Sun Valley purely by chance.
Fiamma chefs Kinsey Leodler (left) and Britt Rescigno.
Fortunately, acclaimed chefs Britt Rescigno and Kinsey Leodler can count themselves among the few for whom fate seems to guide them right to the doorstep of paradise.
New Jersey native Chef Britt Rescigno will be familiar to anyone who follows the world of competitive cooking. Rescigno’s prowess has been validated time and again through her domination of Food Network cooking competitions. Her many professional accolades are punctuated by her wins in the 2019 season of Chopped and Guy’s Grocery Games, a final-four appearance in the Tournament of Champions, and a successful head-to-head win in Beat Bobby Flay.
Long before fame on the competitive reality show stage, Rescigno’s lifelong passion for food and hospitality was ingrained at an early age. She grew up working alongside her family at her grandparents’ South Jersey seafood restaurant. Rescigno didn’t just bus tables or seat guests; she was an anchor on the line by age 13!
With an established culinary career under her belt, Rescigno set out to gain additional formal training by attending the prestigious Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in New York. The CIA program places a great deal of academic emphasis on an externship, which she completed under the tutelage of Bill Brodksy at Wequassett Resort and Golf Club on Cape Cod. No stranger to opening new restaurants, she has helped numerous chefs and restaurateurs bring their visions to life.
Like Rescigno, SoCal-raised Kinsey Leodler has spent her culinary career in the front and back of the house for other well-known restaurateurs. Equal in talent, if not celebrity, Leodler cut her teeth in the culinary world working under the highly regarded Chef Deborah Scott at San Diego mainstay Island Prime Steakhouse. After relocating to Seattle, she has spent most recent years running operations across several restaurants for another Food Network celebrity chef, who has asked to remain anonymous.
While the Food Network alum was in the process of honing the menu for a unique pizza concept in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, a need arose to bring in an additional chef’s perspective and expertise. Thanks to the connections made through their time together competing on Food Network’s Tournament of Champions, Chef Britt Rescigno came in to help put the finishing touches on the new restaurant.
What originally began as a one-month consulting contract quickly doubled into a two-month engagement. Working alongside each other in the throes of restaurant start-up life, Leodler and Resicgno realized they worked exceptionally well as a team. As soon as Kōbo was finally launched, both decided to continue working together and embarked on a journey to create a restaurant of their own.
With one celebrity chef to thank for bringing them together, it would take the influence of yet another famous chef to bring them to Sun Valley. Rescigno recalls her first and very auspicious interaction with James Beard Award-winning Chef Jonathon Sawyer.
“[Jonathan] came up to me when we were filming the TV show Tournament of Champions,” said Resicgno. “And he was like, ‘Hey, I really like you, and I know we just met, but do you want to come out to Sun Valley and do some celebrity chef sh**?’ and I just said, ‘Yeah, but I don’t even know what Sun Valley is.”
Initially, Rescigno assumed Sawyer’s invitation was merely polite banter, but weeks later, Sawyer called to invite her to join him at the Sun Valley Culinary Institute’s (SVCI) annual Food & Wine Celebration. Both Leodler and Rescigno made the trip and were immediately awed by the valley’s rugged beauty and the surprisingly robust culinary scene. While in town, they met with SVCI’s Executive Director, Karl Johan Uri, who explained the philosophy of the school and how it shares similar guiding principles to those of Rescigno’s alma mater, CIA, including the strong emphasis on an externship as the culminating element of their programs.
Rescigno and Leodler felt an immediate connection to the valley during their initial stay, and this feeling has only deepened with time. The Sun Valley Culinary Institute’s mission truly resonated with both chefs. Because of this relationship and the warmth and hospitality of the community as a whole, they both agreed that it was the place they wanted to call home. Having pondered the ideal location for their next venture, these serendipitous events seemed to guide them to where they were perhaps always meant to be.
When asked what they are most excited about as newly minted locals, Leodler stresses the importance of being welcomed, not only to themselves personally but also to the ethos of their new restaurant. “It’s so important to us to be a part of this community,” Leodler said. “This is such a beautiful community here in Sun Valley that is so supportive of restaurants and each other in general. That’s what brought us here, really, at the end of the day: the sense of community that you get in Sun Valley that you really don’t get anywhere else. It was really striking to us, and we want very much to be contributors to that sense of community.”
Leodler and Rescigno’s upcoming contribution to the local dining scene will be called Fiamma (Italian for “little flame”) and is currently being built from the ground up on the corner of Second St. and Leadville, just across Main Street from the Sun Valley Culinary Institute.
Fiamma’s menu will focus on dishes cooked over the open flames of their custom-built hearth, giving meaning to the pair’s tagline, ‘a little flame goes a long way.’ Fiamma will also boast a well-curated wine list and hand-made pasta. When asked about the division of labor between two chefs, Rescigno noted, “I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it a million times: two chefs are better than one.”
As part of the pair’s transition into mountain town living, they have adopted a puppy (aptly named Cannoli) from Mountain Humane and have already begun to commit to contributing to the local community. They easily raised $90,000 for our beloved local animal shelter by auctioning off much-coveted private dinners. With construction well underway, Fiamma aims to be open to the public in time for the FIS Alpine World Cup in March 2025. So, this Spring, these two incredibly talented chefs can deliver on their other promise of adding something new and extraordinary to the valley’s dining scene.