Meet Molly
Molly Levine is a bicoastal chef, specializing in earnest farm-to-table cookery.
She’s also a restaurant consultant, kitchen design advisor, farm dinner curator, event coordinator, and local food advocate.
An East Coast native, she began her culinary journey in Nashville, TN, followed by a three-and-a-half year tenure at Alice Waters’ famed Berkeley, CA restaurant, Chez Panisse, whereby working her way through each station of the restaurant her firm beliefs in seasonality, locality, and sustainability took root.
Her core cooking model is a direct reflection of the immediate land around her, which she applies to her own business, Westerly Canteen: mobile kitchen uniquely housed in a 1971 airstream. As part of a bigger vision, the canteen offers a way to interact with farm spaces and hospitality via a diverse array of dining experiences. From fun pop ups to elegant seated dinners, all intended to close the gap and serve as a liaison between outdoor spaces, hospitality and community members.
Molly consults for other hospitality groups, such as Sagra Farms, applying her decade of restaurant experience and culinary aptitude to kitchen and site designs, programming, menu development, and staff training.
In 2019 Molly led the successful opening of Carissa’s: the restaurant, on the East End of Long Island, from kitchen design and build out to menu writing and recipe development to hiring and training a diverse staff of cooks, into what has become one of East Hampton’s most popular restaurants. Molly collaborated on the aesthetic driven kitchen and restaurant design, that went on to win a Jame’s Beard for outstanding design.
Prior to Carissa’s, she was the head chef of Martha’s Vineyard darling, Behind the Bookstore, where for two years, her spirit of communion and natural cycles inspired the restaurant’s reinvention. She is an avid organizer of farm dinners, natural wine suppers, and collaborative gatherings.
For Molly, cooking is a personal experience, grounded in the environmentally, socio-politically, and community necessitated importance of the relationship between land stewardship, sustainability, and feeding people. Close relationships with farmers, growers, and fishermen fortify her commitment to environment and community, the backbone of it all. The inspiring individuals she meets along the way, the beauty of a freshly grilled spring onion, the smell of just harvested carrots, the briny satisfaction of an oyster shucked straight from the sea, the first sip of a favorite wine (preferably free of sulfites and packing a little funk) on a scorching hot day, all spin their way into her work. She is happiest cooking outdoors, over fire, in the presence of her food’s source.
Molly currently splits time between California & New York- she consults, organizes events, and is in the early stages of cultivating an agritourism in the Hudson Valley with her partner.
For updates on forthcoming events with Westerly Canteen, please visit our instagram, while our site develops.