Joshua Gaulin
Quince | San Francisco
JUNE 2019
Despite waiting tables as a teen, the path that led Joshua Gaulin to a career in hospitality was not exactly clear cut. Unsure of what he wanted to do after graduating high school, he dabbled in restaurant work and accepted a front-of-house position at the Commonwealth Club, a private club in his hometown of Richmond, Virginia. There, Gaulin had the opportunity to try his hand in the kitchen behind the garde manger station. Two months in, he was in love and never looked back.
While still in Richmond, Gaulin joined the back-of-house team at Chef Dale Reitzer’s landmark restaurant Acacia. He started on desserts, a move that ultimately cemented his path in the pastry realm. In 2012, Gaulin moved to California and was hired as pastry chef de partie at Christopher Kostow’s three-Michelin-star Restaurant at Meadowood where he spent roughly a year.
By 2013, the pull of the city was too strong, and Gaulin moved from Napa to San Francisco, where he was pastry sous chef to Shawn Gawle at Quince before landing his first executive pastry chef role at Michael Mina. Two years later in 2019, Gaulin was lured back to the house that Michael Tusk built to come full circle as executive pastry chef of Quince.
