A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Curtola began his career at Oakland’s Camino restaurant under chef Russell Moore, cooking seasonal cuisine in a wood fire, an experience that would profoundly influence his trajectory as a chef. Next, he spent a year in Italy’s Piedmont region, learning the secrets of local culinary tradition. On his return to the US, Curtola took advantage of his newly acquired know-how with a two-year stint at the now defunct Franny’s in Brooklyn. Then in 2012, he changed direction somewhat with a move to colorful Carribean eatery Glady’s, another Brooklyn restaurant that has also sadly closed its doors. His next job saw him return to Italian cuisine, at a third Brooklyn restaurant, Roman’s. After that, Curtola set off overseas again, this time finding work in London, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen, where he worked at the legendary Noma.
In 2015, Curtola got the job of Executive Chef at the soon-to-open Williamsburg wine bar and restaurant The Four Horsemen. The vegetable-forward menu he developed over the following year focused on carefully crafted dishes to accompany the venue’s diverse and extensive cellar of natural wines.
Curtola was a James Beard Foundation semifinalist in the Outstanding Chef category in 2020, and a Best Chefs semifinalist in 2022.
Restaurant
The Four Horsemen was founded by James Murphy, frontman of the revered Brooklyn dance-punk band LCD Soundsystem, along with partners Christina Topsøe (Murphy’s wife), Randy Moon, and natural wine pioneer Justin Chearno, who sadly passed away in 2024. They chose Curtola as their Executive Chef for the restaurant’s opening in 2015, and he has been there ever since.
The restaurant’s short, seasonally changing menu is in the New American tradition, vegetable-forward, stiving for simplicity, and influenced by the rustic regional cooking styles of Italy and France. Its small plates are perfect for pairing with the eclectic selection of natural wines from Europe and around the world.
The Four Horsemen rapidly became a popular destination for locals and visitors alike, arousing interest initially for its celebrity owner, for the chance to listen to his favorite records while dining, and for its impressive wine list, before earning increasing praise for Curtola’s cooking. In 2019, it picked up a Michelin star as well as an enthusiastic two-star review from Pete Wells in The New York Times. In 2022, it won the James Beard Foundation Outstanding Wine Program award, and in 2024 it featured in Eater’s lists of 38 Essential Restaurants in NYC.
Recipes and dishes
Curtola’s culinary philosophy is about simplicity, seasonality, and sourcing the finest ingredients as locally as possible. He has a penchant for wood-fired cuisine but is also a champion of induction cooking for its benefits of control, consistency, and keeping the temperature down in the kitchen!
A typical menu at The Four Horsemen might include dishes such as veal sweetbread skewers with soy-cured egg yolk; marinated Maine mussels with onion vinaigrette and opal basil; chickpea crepe with squash blossoms; and spicy Spanish mackerel with Maine uni, koshihikari rice, and toasted nori. Desserts include crème caramel topped with toasted soba.
Curtola’s first cookbook, published in October 2024, is entitled The Four Horsemen: Food and Wine for Good Times from the Brooklyn Restaurant. In it, Curtola shares over 100 recipes and articulately describes his approach to simplicity in the kitchen. The book also features tales from the restaurant’s founding partners about how they came to open it, the (many) mistakes they made along the way, and the passion for having fun around a table that brought them together in the first place.
