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Daniel Crocco
Executive Chef
Luckily, Chef Danny Crocco let us drag him out for this new website. A Hudson Valley native, he is naturally gifted at eschewing praise and high-mindedness. He’d much rather just get back to work. And by work, we mean running the place, managing the staff, and making a Cuban that stars house-made pork sausage that itself is stuffed with diced ham and chopped pickles.
Since he came into consciousness, Crocco could be found splitting equal time between cracking a baseball bat and cracking eggs at the locally-loved Smoke Haus Deli in Hopewell Junction. From there, though, he had to choose one or the other: ball or food. After “sucking at school” his whole life (his own words), he attended the Culinary Institute of America and graduated 3rd in his class. But Danny now feels like that was just batting practice. So he left the Hudson Valley for remote, coastal Maine and disappeared into a whole new perspective on food by working around the clock for the legendary Chef Melissa Kelly at Primo, the categorical authority on farm-to-table.
“I dropped off the face of the Earth up there,” says Crocco. “I had to. That’s what you do at Primo. I would have happily worked in that kitchen forever.” But after a few years, as happens, life and family called Danny back home. And, despite some cautionary advice and his young age at the time, Danny opened his first restaurant. Brasserie 292. Those were good years, and he’s proud of Brasserie. But Mill House followed a few years later and is, in many ways, the culmination of everything Crocco’s done so far. Danny knew what kind of menu he wanted to create: something like NYC’s The Breslin and DBGB having a love child. A nod to the classics and the comfort foods, perfect pairings for Mill House beer, but all of it driven by a fearlessness to twist, either through seasonal inspiration, rare ingredients, or more simply, something new.
