Since opening in May this year, POST 1917 Steakhouse in Reading has been the buzz of Boston’s North Shore! The essence -THE SOUL- of Chef Jason Carron’s latest creation, however, has been a lifetime in the making.
CHEF JASON CARRON has come a long way since the opening of his first restaurant.
“I was fourteen years old,” Carron recalls fondly. “I was part of the opening team of The Stonehouse in Guilford, Connecticut. I did it all: painted, cleaned, set-up and loaded everything. I was a busboy for about a week, before I was asked to go to the back as a dishwasher.”
The promotion coming mid-shift, the young Carron unbuttoned his shirt, loosened his tie, wrapping it around his forehead like a headband -a badge of honor signifying that those dishes and that dishwasher was his.
“I was on top of the world. I ran that dishwasher with so much pride. Who doesn’t want all the free food they can eat and be around all the pretty waitresses night in and night out at fourteen years old?”
This past May -almost thirty five years- since taking part in the opening of his first restaurant, Chef Carron opened HIS first restaurant, the restaurant of his dreams, POST 1917, in Reading, MA.
Meticulously put together, Carron and his team do not miss or overlook a single detail at POST, literally making it a masterpiece on the North Shore.
It took Carron less than a year to build out the aesthetics of POST, but it’s been a lifetime in the making to build what people are raving most about and coming back weekly to experience: the SOUL he has put into it.
Family, Food & Love
BORN in Meriden, Connecticut, Jason Carron grew up in an Italian-American household in nearby Guilford with his mother and brother, where his family had built a home when he was a young boy.
No matter how busy their days, Carron remembers the importance of family dinner being instilled inside of him at an early age.
“We always had family dinner together,” he says. “When we sat down to eat, it was always together. We talked about our days, and shared whatever we had going on. That was my early indication of food and love. To this day, why I always equate food with love.”
His great-great-great grandparents settling in Queens, New York from Barrea/Abruzzese, Itlay, Carron and family would frequently make the two hour drive down I-95 to visit his Nana.
“As soon as we got to her house all we could smell is food,” he reminisces. “The pizza, the lasagna, the sauce.. when making the meatballs, I used to sneak into the kitchen and eat some of the raw meat. There was always food everywhere.”
Growing up, “restaurant” was a popular game him and his best friend would play. Transforming his family garage into a makeshift eatery, they would play for hours upon hours hosting would be customers into the early version of what would be to come in the future.
“I was the only kid growing up that had G.I Joes, Star Wars, and an Easy-Bake Oven,” he says.
“The food couldn’t have been too bad,” he reasons. “I ate it, and I’m still alive to talk about it.”
A friend of Carron’s mother was dating a successful restauranter named Jim Kohn at the time, who took the young boys under his wing.
Kohn, founder of the James Kohn Restaurant Management Group, possessed degrees from both Cornell and Yale in Hospitality and had a reputation for acquiring and rehabilitating failing restaurants.
Among them, was The Stonehouse that Carron took part on the opening team.
“He was an early mentor and teacher,” Carron says of Kohn. “And someone I still consider a friend and look up to even to this day.”
Heading West
TRADITIONAL schooling never totally caught on with Carron, as he found the restaurant and the kitchen more appealing than the classroom.
Three days after graduating high school, he packed his bags and headed cross-country with a friend to San Diego to see what opportunities may lie in store for him in California.
Within a couple of months he caught on with California Pizza Kitchen in La Jolla, at the time a burgeoning concept on the verge of taking off.
“It was only their second restaurant, I believe,” Carron says. “And I absolutely fell in love with it. I started making pizzas and still can remember that fire (in the oven). You had to keep that fire just right, and when you did, you could fit 24-26 pizzas in at a time. It was intense. It was fun. And I loved it.”
After moving up the ranks, eventually becoming a kitchen manager at CPK, Carron then went across the bay to Coronado, and took a job with Peohe’s Chart House.
It’s at Peohe’s where Carron credits cutting his teeth on the line and gaining his first real experience with volume.
“We would do 900-1000 covers on a Friday or Saturday night,” he says. “We cooked for all of the stars too, everyone came out.”
Cooking for the likes of Gary Busey, Carl Weathers, Riddick Bowe, Evander Holyfield, and BONO to name a few gave Carron valuable exposure and experience -and the apetite- for fine dining.
“I really made my bones there,” he reveals. “It was great.”
Ciao Italia
FOLLOWING his stint at Peohe’s, Carron came back east to complete his schooling at The Culinary Institute of America.
After a fun summer on Cape Cod where he “spent every dollar I made” he found himself in Sant’Agata sui Due Golfi, Itlay cooking among some of the best in the world.
“You want to talk about a tough kitchen to prove yourself in,” he says. “This was it. It was intense. If you wanted an herb, you went to the garden; you wanted cheese, you went to the cellar; you wanted fish, you picked up the phone and it was there in minutes -still moving. You couldn’t prepare a fresher meal.”
His fondest memory of Italy is perhaps his 25th birthday where he was able to spend the day on the island of Capri.
“It was such a beautiful thing,” Carron recalls. “I was sitting out on the patio in my hotel, with a jug of wine, and the most incredible charcuterie board I’ve ever seen. I may not remember much, but I’ll always remember that.”
Fleming’s Chef Partner
BACK home in the United States, Carron moved in with his brother in Lower Allston (“my only time living in LA”) and applied to Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar where he quickly established himself as a rising star in the company, eventually buying in as a chef partner.
Over the next ten years, he went from being a talented cook and back of the house manager with potential to one of the most respected industry leaders in Boston.
“I became very important,” Carron admits. “That ten year experience is what put me to where and who I am today. It was a college degree, a masters degree, and top of the line experience all in one, and I was getting paid.”
Opening “countless Flemings” across the country, Carron helped guide double digit comp increases for the first twenty six quarters of the company while he was there.
“That’s how amazing that company was.”
At home in Boston, his locations saw four years in a row of consecutive $1 million revenue increases.
Opening almost every location from the Mississippi River/East, he gained firsthand knowledge on how the corporate structure of the hospitality industry could and should be operated. He helped author and roll-out training programs to increase efficiency and maximize productivity.
“They were a great company,” Carron states. “It was a privledge to be a big part of the growth.”
Carron built and harbored many lasting relationships during his tenure at Fleming’s -both personal and professional- among them that with his current Executive Chef at POST 1917, Victor Valencia.
“We were two stubborn birds back then,” he says laughing. “I probably fired him once or twice but we both knew I needed him and was going to take him back. There is no one else I would rather have leading my kitchen now. He knows me better than I know myself, and that is a big part of why we are doing so well here (POST 1917).”
The Birth of Avery Consulting
AFTER Fleming’s Carron bounced around Boston and the North Shore opening various restaurants and establishments, many which he set up for successes they continue to enjoy to this day.
Among them, Teresa’s Prime in North Reading, a place he still holds near and dear to his heart.
“I cried the day I left Teresa’s,” he says.
Then, in the summer of 2014, after a single phone interview, Carron was brought in to Del Friscos in Seaport “to straighten the ship out.”
Before anyone knew it, the Seaport Del Friscos location had emerged as a Top 10 Steakhouse in the country, named by USA Today and Carron was potentially eyeing a bright future of continued growth within the company.
“Then the news came out that Del Friscos wasn’t opening anymore companies,” Carron says. “And that kind of knocked the wind out of my sails.”
A little deflated, Carron left Del Friscos “without a job or a pot to piss in” but after years of constant travel, seven day work weeks, and long hours in the kitchen he wanted to focus back on what matters most to him, family.
“I didn’t have a relationship with my son at the time,” he recalls. “Payton Avery was born in 2005 and the entire time I was raising him I was doing it from the kitchen. I knew I wanted to fix that.”
With a renouned focus and new outlook on what, where, and how he wanted to proceed with balancing his career and family life, Carron then started Avery Restaurant Consulting, quickly taking on 781 Bistro and a referral from old friend Jim Kohn back home in Guilford as clients.
“After that, we were off and running,” Carron says. “And I haven’t looked back since.”
Finding Love
ONE year into launching Avery Consulting, Carron -somewhat unexpectedly- stumbled across a different type of love. In this case, it wasn’t a new type of food, but a woman: Lori Haverty.
In September 2017, walking into the Fall Street Faire in Reading, Carron saw the most striking and attractive woman walking alongside him.
“Sometimes you just feel that aura, that attraction,” he says of the first time he saw Lori. “So I just kind of said ‘hey’ smiled and waved.”
A few months later, the two would bump into each other again at Bunratty Tavern, where Lori was hosting her Christmas party for tread studios.
“This time I bought a drink for her and her friends, but that was it,” Carron recalls. “I walked away.”
Then, exactly one year later in January 2019, while having a drink again at Bunratty’s, he sees Lori again.
Determined to finally make his move, Carron walks up to Lori and asks, “Aren’t you Lori Haverty?”
“No,” she abruptly answers. “I don’t know you.”
Unfazed, Carron takes a seat at the bar and sends Lori and her friends a round of drinks.
A little while later, leaving, he goes to give Lori a high-five “only to be told by her that she doesn’t give high-fives.”
Later that evening while eating dinner at Moonshine, Carron received a ding on his phone. It was a facebook message from none other than Lori Haverty.
The bartender at Bunratty’s had vouched for Carron after he left and whatever she said apparently worked because Lori was beginning to come around on getting to know the kind man who was gently pursuing her.
“And here we are now seven years later,” Carron says smiling. “I couldn’t be in a better spot.”
POST 1917
“WE first looked at POST back in 2019,” Carron says of the establishment he has now built.
Back then, it was still a $3 million+ project to see through to completion, and just not feasible at the time.
“I’m good, but not that good,” Carron muses. “Nobody was going to give me that kind of money to do this.”
After stepping away from the building, Carron says they took a second look in October 2023, and decided they had to do it. Teaming with his brother-in-law (who bought the building), and they began putting together the plans and lay-out for what would the masterpiece he had been constructing in his head his entire life.
“We closed on November 15th,” he says. “And then we were open by April.”
Says Carron: “When you’re inside of it, you don’t always realize how beautiful it is, because you just want to get open. I am blessed to have the most incredible team who worked their tails off to help make it all happen. Once we finished though, and were able to take a step back and see what we created… words can’t describe the feeling.”
The mindset though, Carron explains, is actually quite simple:
“Every day we (the POST 1917 team) come in, we come in ready to be the most hospitable group we possibly can. We want everyone to feel like family when they walk through our doors.”
The Soul of the Kitchen
INSIDE Post 1917, hanging on the wall is a painting of the late great celebrity Chef Anthony Bourdain.
“I was lucky enough to meet him once,” Carron says. “That is a man who had SOUL. You can feel his presence and impact across industry. He dedicated -and gave- his entire life to this.”
When you come to POST 1917 Steakhouse you are engulfed by the striking designs and layout of the restaurant and blown away by the freshness and delicious food on the menu. You recognize and appreciate the hospitality and friendliness of the staff, but the feeling inside, the one that keeps you coming back and giving you the warmness and love of family wasn’t constructed with the restaurant.
That was built over a lifetime.
From sit down family dinners in Guilford to the smells and tastes of Nana’s recipes in Queens; from that first Easy Bake Oven to a necktie around the forehead while washing dishes as a teen; from rotating twenty-six pizzas at a time at CPK to cooking for numerous celebrities nationwide; from earning your stripes in a kitchen in Italy to helping the build out of one of the most successful steakhouses in the country.
What keeps you coming back to POST 1917 is a little bit and much more from all of the above. Because that’s the soul of the restaurant. That’s the soul of the kitchen.
That’s the SOUL of Chef Jason Carron.
All images courtesy of POST 1917 Steakhouse and Chef Jason Carron
