Lunch with the proprietors of Michelin-starred Chez Noir, with conversation on the menu.

Dave Faries here, with a blatantly promotional pitch for the Weekly’s Mic’d Up session tomorrow, Sept. 5. 

I will be sitting down with one of Monterey County’s top restaurant couples and one of just two Michelin-starred chefs, Jonny and Monique Black. If I remember correctly, I may have exchanged brief greetings over the phone with Monique, who runs the front of the house at their Carmel restaurant, Chez Noir. I had called to speak with the chef in July 2023, after the Michelin awards ceremony. I have met Jonny in person only once—not at a restaurant, but during Concours d’Elegance last year, when we both were randomly attracted to the caviar cart.

It is appropriate that he stopped to speak with the proprietor of the sustainably farmed Sacramento-area operation. The chef is obsessive about sourcing quality local products, for one. He has been known to talk artisanal cured ham from a farmer’s barn or forage himself for wild herbs. 

Both Jonny and Monique come from well-awarded white tablecloth backgrounds. Yet they are not defined by stratospheric dining. Chez Noir is intended as a comfortable village bistro, attired for fine dining. The emphasis is on quality and technique, as well as for guests to experience the joy in being on the receiving end of all of that.

“I like to cook food that is fancy, but I don’t want it to be too precious,” Jonny once told me, over the phone.

What does that mean in practice? In 2019 I dragged a high school-age granddaughter to lunch at Sierra Mar at Big Sur’s Post Ranch Inn, where Jonny was executive chef at the time. Here was my impression: “He got to know the farmer, to see the produce ripen and select just what he wanted. He also drove to pick the stuff up. And all of that for just a few crates of tomatoes. Some of those tomatoes end up cold smoked and spread on the bun of a simple burger. The result is profound—a fruity sweetness that is rich and deep, with acrid curls of smoke that mimic the presence of a backyard grill. This layers into a ground beef patty so musky, so earthy, so evocative of pasture land you begin to realize this is one of the few times you’ve truly savored beef.”

That, by the way, is the only burger he has put on a menu in maybe his entire career.

Five years later, that granddaughter still raves about the meal—a pretty impressive compliment for a chef. A finicky teenager with few culinary expectations beyond what she was used to in rural Nebraska caught on to the nuances of each plate.

Chez Noir is something the couple talked about during the pandemic. "We really set out to build our version of a restaurant we like—that highlights our favorite producers in a place we love," the chef told me. What they are doing clearly works. In its first year, Chez Noir, the Blacks and their team earned a Michelin star and was named a James Beard Award finalist for Best New Restaurant—in the U.S.

It will be fun to meet in person and learn how they manage it all. And you can join. Mic’d Up takes place at 12:30pm on Thursday, Sept. 5 at Creperie Cafe (also known as The Press Club), 1123 Fremont Blvd., Seaside. And I won’t hog the mic, promise. There will be time for an audience Q&A.

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