Max Snyder
Pitchfork Pretty | Austin
December 2017
Austin is a homecoming for Chef Max Snyder, and an opportunity to fully flex his talent. Early in his career, Snyder set his sights on the country’s most lauded kitchens. He moved to San Francisco for formative work at Daniel Patterson’s Coi. He then traded coasts for a five-year run with Chef Daniel Humm, first at Eleven Madison Park and then as a sous chef at The NoMad.
San Francisco’s climate, produce, and community drew him back, though. Snyder rounded out his skills as a butcher at Joshua Skene’s Saison and eventually took over Le Marais as executive chef. Having studied and cooked for a decade, Snyder began to come into his own. He joined the opening team of Old Bus Tavern, where he condensed his fine-dining acumen to elevate brewery food. In 2016, famed food critic for The San Francisco Chronicle, Michael Bauer, wrote that Snyder had, “turned the brewpub into a dining destination, creating imaginative combinations that cleverly walked the line between the required and the unexpected.”
In 2017, Snyder returned to his childhood stomping grounds to open Pitchfork Pretty, an East Austin restaurant that’s as casual as it is ambitious. He and his wife also started a small farm that supplies his kitchen with all manner of heat-loving vegetables. Snyder’s dishes at once embrace Austin’s quirkiness, down-home traditions, and its growing cosmopolitan sensibilities. Pitchfork Pretty is a restaurant for this moment in Austin, and Snyder is a chef with enough talent to shape the city’s dining trends as it continues to grow.
