Growing up a second-generation chef, Alexey Naumov of Khloe Bistrot in Fort Lee had to go through his mother’s kitchen in order to see her. He’s always been there since the first cut he got on his finger at six-years-old.    “My uncle had a restaurant, my aunt had a restaurant, my family’s restaurant people,” Naumov says.   He is a 1992 graduate of the French Culinary Institute and calls their head chef and Thierry Laurent early influences, as well as several others at two and three star kitchens in Manhattan. Naumov says his mom instilled in him to learn as much as possible from as many …

At just 15-years-old, chef Sam Gnasso of In Napoli in Fort Lee had a kismet moment that would shape the rest of his life. One Friday night, a neighbor who was a bartender at the Clam Casino, a local restaurant from back in the day, called and said a dishwasher hadn’t shown up for his shift. “I got to work in the kitchen and I loved it,” Gnasso says. “It was one of the most exciting things I’d seen -- food running in and out and flames and broilers and sauté pans running, and yelling chefs and screaming waiters.” Some of Gnasso’s earliest influences include The Galloping Gourmet and Paul …