Greetings and welcome to my most awesome biography. I’m Dennis Kelly, and I grew up in greater Boston, in Arlington Massachusetts. Since, I have moved around the country quite a bit, but kept the accent, my love for the Red Sox, and a great clam chowdah recipe.
I’m a little older these days. Not old enough to have witnessed Paul Revere’s ride. But he did trot down Mass Ave., near my childhood home. I started cooking while working my way through college last century at a Holiday Inn. Next, With an industrial Engineering degree from the University of Lowell in hand, I pursued a 20+ year career in high technology at industry-leading computer companies.
But the hospitality itch came back. In 2009 I intentionally pivoted my career, back to my first love, the restaurant business. After buying and running a boutique roadhouse restaurant in Sonoma county for a few years, I traveled the country honing my hospitality skills. The list of establishments I’ve worked for is long, from large resort hotels, to local brew pubs, to college campuses, to celebrity restaurants and included a fishing lodge assignment in Alaska.
Perhaps of note here, I also spent two very fun summers feeding 100s of youngsters daily, as head chef at large kids’ camps in upstate New York and the lake region of New Hampshire. So Camp Augusta is my third. It’s rewarding for me to work with kids, they keep me young, seem to have more fun than adults and what they think is funny, I also think is funny.