At Golden Door, so much of what ends up on the plate starts just steps from the kitchen. On a recent stay, we spent an afternoon walking through the gardens with Executive Chef Greg Frey Jr., tasting what was growing and learning more about the way he thinks about food. For Frey, it starts with good ingredients and knowing when to let them do the work.
It’s an approach he’s been refining throughout his career, from the kitchens of Charleston Grill and Bernardus Lodge to more than a decade at Golden Door, where he’s helped move wellness cuisine away from restriction and toward food that is seasonal, nourishing, and genuinely enjoyable to eat.
That philosophy is also at the heart of his newly released cookbook, The Golden Door Table. We caught up with Frey to talk about the kitchens that shaped him, what cooking at a wellness retreat has taught him, his longtime obsession with beekeeping, and the simple cooking tricks and kitchen staples he thinks are actually worth knowing.
In the Kitchen with Chef Greg Frey
Your culinary journey has taken you from Charleston to Carmel Valley to Golden Door. Looking back at your time at Charleston Grill, Bernardus Lodge, Pamplemousse Grille, and Bluefire Grill, how did each kitchen help shape the cooking philosophy you have today?
I love this question because the places I’ve worked are so central to who I am today.
Charleston was the perfect training ground for a young chef. It’s a small peninsula, so after a crazy service, everyone ended up at the same neighborhood bars. You’d be a beginner sitting right next to chefs who had been doing this for 30 years. If you just listened, you could pull a lifetime of knowledge in a short amount of time. Plus, working at the Charleston Grill under Bob and Michelle gave me the absolute best mentors I could ask for.
After some traveling, I landed at Bernardus, which completely shaped my cooking style. Chef Cal is a wizard in the kitchen with one of the best palates I’ve ever seen. But the biggest takeaway for me was his relationship with local farmers, fishermen, and winemakers. It wasn’t a PR stunt; it was how we lived every day. As a young Chef de Cuisine, I just tried to soak it all in. That’s where my real understanding of garden-to-table cooking was born.
Later, Pamplemousse introduced me to the San Diego culinary scene and really taught me the business and financial side of running a kitchen successfully.
That led to Blue Fire Grill, where I had the honor of reconceptualizing the menu to focus on farm-direct cooking, balancing a healthy perspective with resort dining. It really solidified who I wanted to be as a chef and acted as the guiding river that brought me to the Golden Door.
You’ve been Executive Chef at Golden Door for more than a decade. What drew you to the property in the first place, and what has kept you there and for readers who may not be familiar, how would you describe Golden Door and what makes it different from other wellness retreats?
It is honestly hard to believe that I have been at Golden Door for over 12 years now, in chef years, that is an incredibly long time! What has kept me here is a combination of the amazing team I work with every day, having the most incredible dining room a chef could ask for, and an ownership and management team that understands giving you an open space to create allows truly amazing things to happen.
One of the unique things about my time here is that we radically changed direction when I first arrived. Back then, the food trend leaned toward austerity. It felt clinical and far too strict, which didn’t align with what I believed Golden Door should be. To me, Golden Door exists to help us live, enjoy, and appreciate a better life. I believe that means eating the bounty of what the world has to offer, rather than constantly saying ‘no’ to this or that.
I set out to completely destroy the old stereotype that spa food is just a hard-boiled egg, a rice cake, and some microgreens. I wanted people to look at healthy food and realize it represents everything beautiful that nature has to offer.
How is cooking at a wellness retreat different from cooking in a traditional restaurant or luxury resort?
This is easily the toughest part of the job. At a normal luxury resort, guests go out into town, visit friends, or try different restaurants on the property. But at a retreat like Golden Door, our biggest challenge is keeping 41 incredibly well-traveled, multicultural guests happy eating at the exact same place 21 times in a row.
Think about it, you don’t even eat at your own house 21 times in a row! So when people come here to be pampered, the pressure is on us. We have to design our menus so that every single meal period feels fresh, exciting, and like somewhere they actually want to return to every single day.
You’ve spoken about how tasting produce directly from farmers transformed the way you think about food. What should people look for when shopping for fruits and vegetables?
To be honest, it started even before farmers, tasting what I grew in my own garden as a kid completely ruined grocery store produce for me! You just don’t get that real flavor at the supermarket. To be fair, commercial farmers have to grow varieties that look pretty, pack well, and travel long distances. I always say that produce gets jet lag just like humans do!
But if you want to know what to look for when shopping, the absolute biggest secret is understanding ripeness. People buy unripe fruit thinking it’ll magically get better on the kitchen table. It doesn’t, it just starts to rot. My number one rule, especially for fruit, is to use your nose. It should smell amazing before you even cut into it. Grab that pack of berries; if it doesn’t smell like a fantastic strawberry from the outside of the package, it’s not going to taste like one when you get it home
What’s worth splurging on in the kitchen, and where is it totally fine to save?
In my opinion, you should absolutely splurge on your vinegars and oils. The quality of those two things makes a ginormous difference in the final dish. On the flip side, it’s perfectly fine to go inexpensive on things like flour, grains, and even sugar. The only caveat there is to look for the least processed version possible. For example, we use natural evaporated cane sugar for that exact reason.
You’re also known as a passionate beekeeper. How did that journey begin and what’s your favorite way to use honey in the kitchen?
While I was at Blue Fire, the property’s general manager challenged me to develop a unique project that would bring added value to the restaurant and resort, similar to a kitchen garden. Because we lacked the space for a full garden, the idea shifted to installing beehives on the property to harvest our own honey. After doing some research, I fell in love with the concept and decided I didn’t just want to oversee the project, I wanted to be the beekeeper. As for my favorite way to use honey? It’s hard to beat eating it straight off the spoon.
After years of guests asking for recipes, what inspired you to finally write your upcoming cookbook, The Golden Door Table, and what can people expect?
Golden Door actually has a history of publishing cookbooks, I believe this will be our fifth, but our guests started asking me for one just a year or two into my time here. Writing a cookbook is a massive undertaking, but I’m glad we took our time because the final result is exactly what it needs to be.
The Golden Door Table isn’t an ego project or a book about luxury. I wrote it for the everyday home cook who wants to eat healthier. I want to shatter the myth that healthy cooking is complicated or difficult—it’s actually pretty simple.
My main goal was to make these recipes incredibly approachable. You won’t have to visit twelve different specialty stores to find the ingredients. While there are a few unique items that might be new to some readers, everything can be easily found at your local grocery store or ordered online straight to your doorstep
How do you build flavor without relying on excess salt, sugar, or heavy sauces?
I like to summarize this by sharing a piece of advice from my old chef. He told me, ‘Greg, you aren’t creating flavor, you’re harnessing it.’ Our job is to collect flavor, advance it, and present as much of it on the plate as possible.
When you cook with fresh, high-quality ingredients, heavy sauces actually ruin the food because they mask all those bright, natural flavors. Salt and sugar should only be used as subtle enhancers to wake a dish up, but you should never actually taste them in the final bite.
What’s one kitchen habit you’ve developed over the years that makes cooking easier?
The simplest one is to clean as you go. Keep your work area clear, your cutting board wiped down, and your knife clean. It really comes down to the old saying: a clean and organized space gives you a clean and organized mind.
What’s a kitchen gadget that’s actually worth the counter space and investment?
VitaMix blender.
What’s your go-to meal when you don’t feel like cooking?
Carbonara
What’s a chef’s trick that home cooks rarely use?
Reaching for the acid vs salt when the flavor is less than expected.
What are three pantry staples you think everyone should keep on hand?
Great great quality vinegar and agromato olive oil and diamond crystal kosher salt.
If someone wanted to bring a little bit of the Golden Door philosophy into their own kitchen, where would you tell them to start?
I always tell people to start by looking at their plate like a pie chart: one-quarter protein, one-quarter complex carbohydrates, and the entire other half fresh vegetables. If you do just that, you are already halfway there.
To take it a step further, make sure that vegetable half is a rainbow of colors to ensure you are getting a rich variety of nutrients.
Finally, challenge yourself to go completely without salt for three days. It will be tough—maybe even feel impossible, but it resets your palate. Once those three days are up, you will taste ingredients differently and start using salt in a much more mindful way going forward.
