BY ELLIOT ACOSTA
PHOTOS BY JESSICA BRATTON
Throughout his nearly three-decade career as a celebrated chef, Scott Crawford has always trusted his gut. This hasn’t just applied to the flavors and cuisine he serves at his fleet of Crawford Hospitality restaurants; it expands to the opportunities and chances he has taken as an entrepreneur. “I go a lot off of just a feeling—call it a gut feeling or feeling it in your heart. I definitely operate that way,” Crawford reflects. It was this internal compass that steered him to undertake an ambitious year in 2024 that included opening restaurants Brodeto, Crawford Brothers Steakhouse, Crawford Genuine and his cocktail bar, Sous Terre.
Crawford serendipitously found his way to a professional kitchen as a restless Floridian teenager in the nineties, far from the prestige that the occupation enjoys today. “In the early nineties [cooking] was still very much a blue-collar, gritty, dirty job,” he recalls. “Even my own dad said, ‘This isn’t really a career, is it?’”
Despite its seemingly dead-end prospects, Crawford found an immediate connection working inside a kitchen. “What I realized is I did have a natural ability to make food do what I want it to do. That immediately made me enjoy it, allowed me to work with my hands. [It allowed me to] be a craftsman and allowed me a creative outlet.”
It wasn’t until Crawford was in Richmond visiting a friend that he saw the potential of being a career chef. It was here he spent time working under Chef Michelle Williams of the Richmond Restaurant Group. “She was very young, very driven, cooking great food, and the culture in her kitchen was one I hadn’t experienced before. It was much more positive. It really inspired me,” says Crawford. “I was at a pivotal moment in my life, and she was that person I needed to meet to see what it’s like if you put everything you have into it.”
Inspired by his time in Richmond, Crawford returned to Florida to attend culinary school. After graduation, he moved out West. “San Francisco was completely next-level. Not only from a standpoint of cooking, but the overall restaurant scene,” he says. However, the lifestyle proved to be unsustainable and Crawford returned to the Sunshine State for a job with Ritz-Carlton Hotels, where he spent time traveling to open restaurants for the hotel chain.
After his stint for Ritz-Carlton, Crawford moved on to Charleston, South Carolina, and then Sea Island, Georgia. Eventually, his work was noticed by The Umstead Spa and Hotel in Cary. “I got a call from The Umstead when I was at Sea Island, and I’m pretty sure I got the call because I [had] achieved a Forbes Five Star, and they wanted that, too,” he recalls.
With their young son to consider, Crawford and his wife, Jessica, recognized the Triangle as an ideal location to raise their family. “The economy wasn’t doing great at the time, but [the Triangle] was doing pretty well. It is driven by universities and tech and some real foundational, solid stuff that drives the economy. We thought this was a growing area, and it has continued to grow the whole time since we’ve been here.” The Crawfords also recognized the Triangle’s bubbling culinary industry, “We were looking for an emerging food scene. We didn’t think this [one] had been fully formed, and that meant there was opportunity to be involved in that.”
Through Crawford’s leadership, The Umstead was awarded a Forbes Five Star and a AAA Five Diamond award in 2012. Yet even with his success at the luxury hotel, Crawford knew his time there was fleeting. “I remember thinking to myself, ‘This is a five-year project, then I am going to get out of hotels.’” Longing to remove himself from the rigors of hotel dining, he left The Umstead in 2014 and opened Standard Foods in downtown Raleigh’s Person Street District. After just a six-month tenure, Crawford departed the restaurant and grocery concept. He had gained his fourth James Beard Award nomination, but also a better understanding of what he wanted from the business side of owning a restaurant.
Yet he found himself in unfamiliar territory. It was the first time he didn’t have a completely formed plan. When prospective business partners offered him an opportunity to return to Charleston, it was another instance where Crawford listened to his gut. “We had good backing and things were sort of aligning [in Charleston], but you know, it just didn’t feel right. It felt right to do something more grassroots. We felt like we still had something to contribute to [the Raleigh] food scene.”
What felt right for Crawford was taking over a former pie bakery and recreating it as his elevated neighborhood restaurant, Crawford and Son, which opened in 2016. At the time, he wasn’t looking beyond this opportunity. “I just wanted to focus on Crawford and Son when I opened it. I knew I had to make [it] successful before I could start considering other opportunities.”
After Crawford and Son was met with critical acclaim and commercial success, Crawford began to match opportunities with his wanderlust. When a small space next door became available, he was inspired by his recent trip to Paris and how the city was able to utilize intimate spaces. This led him to create his second restaurant, Jolie. After traveling to the Adriatic, Crawford pitched developers the idea of an expanded interpretation of Italian cuisine with Croatian influences, which sparked Brodeto.
This wanderlust and love of food resulted in a diverse catalog of concepts for Crawford Hospitality, which is by design. “Our concepts need to be wildly different,” Crawford says. “The worst thing I could do is make our concepts too similar, because we’d be watering down our own brand. You should be able to walk in and tell it’s a Crawford Hospitality restaurant; however, each concept should make you feel different.”
Fueling the diverse menus is a process driven by inspiration and teamwork. “It usually starts with the ingredients and flavor profiles. I bounce ideas and deep-dive study with my culinary director, Conor Delaney, to create the framework, then bring in the chef de cuisine that executes the menu. Some sous chefs may also be invited. All ideas are on the table. It’s a very natural, organic process of collaboration.”
Once his active 2024 concluded with the opening of Cary’s Crawford Brothers Steakhouse in Fenton, Crawford turned his focus to operating his portfolio of restaurants. However, he admits, “I don’t need to do more restaurants, but I do know the creative bug can get to me. And I also have really outstanding people who work for me that have a say. If they tell me they feel really passionate about doing something, I’ll probably do it.”
Read “Brothers and Survivors”, our May/June 2025 cover story about Scott Crawford’s personal journey with his older brother Steve that led him from a young life of drug abuse and criminal behavior to to the successful chef and restaurateur he is today
