You can find this one-time urban dweller in the high desert and Sangre de Cristo mountains of Taos, NM. Zak is a world-renowned chef and restaurateur, winning a James Beard Award for Best chef in 2016 for his legendary restaurant Fish & Game in Hudson, NY, which, in 2020, Esquire named one of the most influential restaurants of the decade. Shortly thereafter, Pelaccio closed F&G to spend more time in the west, but prior to closing, Zak, his partner and wife, Jori, and writer Peter Barrett spent 3 years documenting the unique processes they pioneered at the restaurant, which was not only famed for its fire cooked haute cuisine, but for Jori’s methodology of whole utilization, using and reusing products in their various points of maturity, fermentation, and controlled decomposition. Also, the team was known for growing its own produce, raising many of its own animals, foraging for wild herbs and managing its own honey bees. Click here to buy the book: Project 258: Making Dinner at Fish & Game

Pelaccio also built what numerous food mags have called Hudson’s best bar and one of the best bars in America, BackBar. Currently Zak is operating New Mexico’s first Natural Wine Bar in Taos, NM called Corner Office and is working on a Southeast Asian joint in Santa Fe slatted to open summer 2025 called Leo’s. He is partner in the vibrant and radical Italian Diner called Cosmica that opened in Salt Lake City in the spring of 2025.

Zak’s career started when he built Brooklyn’s first gastro-pub in Williamsburg Brooklyn i 2002, The Chickenbone Cafe, he pioneered NYC’s nose-to-tail culinary movement, and in 2005 brought Malaysian inspired food to the National mainstream, with the famed Fatty Crab and Fatty ‘Cue restaurants in Manhattan, Brooklyn, St. John and Hong Kong. The aggressively flavored, spicy and colorful Fatty Crab cuisine is featured in Zak’s other Award winning book Eat With Your Hands.