Marc on the Mat

1999 F&W Best New Chef Marc Vetri brings his lessons from Brazilian jiu-jitsu to the kitchen.

- By Joshua David Stein

MARC VETRI 1999 F&W Best New Chef

Restaurant at the Time of Award Vetri Cucina, Philadelphia

Legacy Since 1998, Marc Vetri's groundbreaking Italian restaurants have helped put Philadelphia's culinary scene on the map.

IT'S EARLY ON A COLD SATURDAY MORNING, and Marc Vetri, one of Philadelphia's best chefs, known for his trailblazing Italian restaurants, is warming up at Precision Jiu-Jitsu, a gym just outside the city.

Brazilian jiu-jitsu, which is often described as physical chess, rewards the sort of rabbit-hole personality that flourishes in professional kitchens. It has found particular purchase in the culinary world ever since Anthony Bourdain started practicing in 2013, but Vetri picked it up in 2009, when his back and knees gave out playing in Philly's famously rigorous pickup basketball scene. For Vetri, life on the mat has blended with life off of it. "Training is a lesson in humility, like the restaurant is every night," he says. "Sometimes you are going to get your ass handed to you, and sometimes you are going to be the star of the show. You just have to roll with it."

Class begins, and Vetri engages in friendly but intense combat. Some of the younger students-including Vetri's teenage son Maurice-move kinetically. Vetri, on the other hand, moves in a slow, powerful, deliberate way.