Lucian Prellwitz IN as Beast Chef De Cuisine

Lucian Prellwitz is the new chef de cuisine at Beast, chef-owner Naomi Pomeroy tells Eater. “He has a really wonderful rapport with the staff, and I hired him as much for his food as for the energy he brings,” she says.

Pomeroy confirms Jake Stevens is leaving Beast after three years—a detail tucked inside an article by The O. Pomeroy says Stevens gave a full year’s notice, and Prellwitz has been training beneath him for the last two months. Stevens officially departs the end of March, and he’s recently popped up as part of the new Shipwreck pop-up series.

Prellwitz is originally from Indiana. He brings experience as former Ned Ludd chef de cuisine and former sous chef of Napa Valley’s Ubuntu, where he says he honed his vegetable-forward cooking skills. Those skills will come in handy at Beast, Pomeroy says.

“We have a reputation for being all meat all the time,” she says, “but we’re actually pretty vegetable-forward. The reason we called it Beast goes back to a super old story. We were doing a set menu and had two employees: me and Mika [Paredes]. We wanted to let people know it had meat on the menu, but we’ve always offered an all-vegetarian option with advanced notice.”

Prellwitz tells Eater he’s most excited to be working within the Beast format. “I think six courses with the ‘main’ course being third provides dishes that are, what I think, the perfect size: enough bites to feel satisfied, but small enough to leave intrigue for what's to come.”

Prellwitz says he’ll continue to use the vegetables skills picked up from Ubuntu and carry through the pasta program that Stevens started. With Prellwitz’s many connections with local farmers, it appears Beast could take an even more seasonal approach.

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