Learning to cook, according to Curtis Stone, is just like learning any other skill. You have to be patient, studious, and creative, over and over and over again. “Just like a carpenter learns to saw wood and how to get a right angle, we learn how to apply heat and technique to ingredients. That’s kind of all you’ve got,” he tells me on an early afternoon in March, where we are conversing in the soon-to-be packed dining room of his Michelin-starred restaurant Gwen.

Australia-born Stone, world-renowned chef, television personality, and restaurateur, can afford to be so flippant. After all, “kind of all you’ve got” for Stone means years of meticulous culinary study; two beloved Los Angeles restaurants, two Michelin stars, and cultural ubiquity in the food space. It is evident that Stone has mastered the craft of cooking. And, with Gwen on Sunset Boulevard, the proof is in the proverbial pudding.

Stone began his career working as an apprentice at the Savoy Hotel in Melbourne, Australia, before moving to London at 21. There, he advanced his techniques under the wing of Marco Pierre White, and eventually rose to Head Chef at Quo Vadis, and between his culinary duties, emerged on television.

In 2014, Stone planted his flag on US soil with the opening of his first solo restaurant, Maude, in Beverly Hills, named after his late paternal grandmother. Two years later, Stone and his brother Luke opened Gwen, a dual butcher counter and high-end restaurant in Hollywood named after the pair’s late maternal grandmother. The two restaurants ran concurrently for nearly a decade, Maude featuring a new 10-course tasting menu every month, with each iteration focused around one seasonal ingredient, and Gwen bringing elements of The Outback to the glitzy location on Sunset.

Individually, each restaurant has earned a Michelin star, and though Stone closed Maude in 2024 to focus his energies on Gwen, he recollects:

“We just loved it because we just got to run wild with the creativity of it… We would just keep throwing everything away and start it again. And you had to, because otherwise it wouldn’t work with the next ingredient.”

Gwen, now entering its 10th year, has evolved around Stone’s relationship with home. When speaking about the relative after whom the restaurant was named, he asserts: “She lives on here through the smell of the room,” as he glances at the wood burning from the several open fires in the airy dining room. Gwen sees hundreds of guests a night luxuriate in these affective details—the warmth of a hearth, the smell of meat grilling on the blazes. Whole animals hang from the ceiling in a glass container. Chopped wood sits in dark corners of the dining room. Every part of every animal is used. Stone has clearly endeavored to endear the Outback to glitzy Hollywood clientele, and it’s working. Granny Gwen would be proud. “It’s pretty primal, but it’s also done with real elegance, which is a bit different than my granny’s house,” Stone laughs.

This self-described “primal” elegance is, in part, what earned Gwen its Michelin star in 2022. But the more substantial component was Stone’s commitment to a standard. Michelin inspectors are welcomed at any time, on any night of any week. Stone sees that variable as a reason to cook every single dish to excellence. “It’s a big honor, and it comes with a lot of responsibility, because you have to keep [it] every time you win one.” Stone also credits his team for the achievement. He collaborates well—though he admits this doesn’t mean work is always easy and pays competitively. But more importantly, he adds, he keeps the place dynamic and evolving. “We’re all educating each other. That’s what’s beautiful, the give and take.”

Stone is certainly more of a giver. On his staff are several people formerly incarcerated and homeless—some even working with him for 15 years—who he hired through Chrysalis, a Los Angeles-based service encouraging rehabilitation through long-term employment. Stone has also dug his heels into Hollywood and embraced its challenges. Last year, there were rumblings of Gwen moving to the West Side, but he and his team realized the establishment and its community would only be strengthened if they doubled down on the original location. He admits, “The more we thought about it, the more we landed on, ‘We love this place.’ We want to reinvest in it, and we want to make it even more exciting.”

Photographed by Jonathan Hedrick

Written by Michael Gallagher

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