Dan Drayer
Corporate Chef
Talk of the Town Restaurant Group

Dan Drayer’s curiosity with food began as a young boy while making homemade ice cream in an old-fashioned ice cream parlor in Galveston, Texas. He filleted fish and helped unload shrimp boats that pulled up to the pier and at home he began spending time in his grandmother’s kitchen where she taught him the “love of food” and the rest is history!

After an extensive education in the sciences, Dan’s passion and creative drive led him through years of culinary education. Dan began his formal basic culinary training in Denver, then continued on at The Culinary Institute of America’s prestigious Greystone in California and finished in Paris at the World Famous Cordon Bleu.

Chef Drayer’s professional career began in a small Italian restaurant in Denver that leaned heavily toward Mediterranean – Italian country cuisine rather than the typical meatball and spaghetti fare. His efforts enabled him to be honored as one of the top three chefs in Colorado. He then moved to Houston where he refined his cooking techniques at Tony Vallone’s landmark restaurant. Club Corporation of America that owned and managed exclusive, high-end country clubs and city clubs throughout the world eventually recruited him. After receiving club of the year and special achievement awards Chef Drayer was drafted by Sfuzzi, a high end and high profile Tuscan eatery. He assisted Sfuzzi in creating their trend setting menus and his passionate contribution in teaching helped develop chefs and managers from California to New York. During this time Drayer headed up broad promotional affairs such as the American Airlines National Convention, the Dallas Cowboys Super Bowl reception, and the American Cancer Society’s Cattle Baron’s Ball. With the advent of their showcase store opening on the Las Vegas strip in 1995, the Sfuzzi owners transferred Drayer to preside over their largest venture. While in Vegas, Drayer won top placement in the Culinary Olympics and taped a cooking segment for the Food Networks “Cooking with the Stars”. He also assisted in the food creation and preparation for the “Jackie O” Leukemia Foundation Benefit serving VIPs from around the country.

After a short term independent venture, Drayer took a position with the Palm Restaurant at Caesar’s Palace. By now Chef Drayer was married and raising twin daughters and a son, which had him thinking in terms of where to raise a family. Potential opportunities in Florida kept popping up, so when The Palm offered to relocate him from Las Vegas to Orlando to open The Palm at the Hard Rock Hotel, he and his wife decided to make the move.

After several years with The Palm he joined Talk of the Town Restaurant Group. Talk of the Town was already operating several notable restaurants in the area when it began developing the idea for MoonFish Restaurant. All of a sudden Chef Drayer thought, “Well, now I know why we’re here.” With MoonFish Drayer’s job was to help execute the concept, it performed so well that it received awards as one of the Top 10 Seafood Restaurants in the country in its first several months of operation.

Chef Drayer is, without a doubt, a man driven and passionate about food. He is constantly searching for ways to improve the concepts company wide by evaluating the latest culinary trends in books and magazines and visiting other restaurants locally and around the world. In turn, he challenges the company’s Chefs to craft their menus and creativity to exceed customer’s expectations.