CHEF PROFILES | FLORIDA

Chef Clay Conley Found His Next Big Idea on 80 Acres of Quiet Land

STOKE | MAP | WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM

By Eric Barton | Oct. 6, 2025

AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.

I was sitting at a long table at Buccan, surrounded by a small pack of journalists lavishing a chef with praise between mouthfuls of food. Clay Conley had just covered the table with plates: tuna crisps, short rib empanadas, burrata with Bartlett pears. He accepted the compliments with a small smile, modest thank yous, the sort of quiet you see in someone who’s been through it—years of packed dining rooms, Michelin recommendation, and a thousand versions of “chef, that was amazing.”

Then I mentioned his farm.

The change was instant. His posture straightened, his voice lifted, and the words tumbled out. He talked about the 80 acres in Gainesville where he and his wife, Averill, had settled with friends Vanessa and Hutson Rapier, and about Stoke Barn and Kitchen—a sprawling open-air barn where he’ll soon host source-to-plate dinners cooked over fire. In that moment, it was obvious that the farm isn’t a side project. It’s the next act.

Conley’s Palm Beach flagship, Buccan, still feels like the beating heart of the island’s food scene—a buzzy dining room and elegant plates built around what’s fresh at the moment. On the mainland, he has Grato, which I’d argue is West Palm Beach’s best restaurant. And attached to Buccan, a humble takeout-only sandwich shop, which I’ve never seen without a line of people standing out front. “It still blows my mind how many sandwiches we turn out every day,” he told me.

For a guy who once ran culinary operations for Todd English—“a wild ride,” he said, “service felt like playing a competitive sport”—Conley’s story starts far from the chaos. He grew up in rural Maine on 30 acres, in a 17th-century house heated only by wood fire. “My days were mostly spent feeding animals, chopping and stacking firewood, and planting thousands of apple trees,” he said. Cooking came later, almost by accident. A latchkey kid, he’d tape reruns of “Great Chefs” and copy down recipes in a notebook. By his teenage years, he was washing dishes at a fine-dining restaurant just to get close to the food.

When I ask if Gainesville feels like returning home, he pauses before saying, “When I left Maine, I couldn’t get out fast enough. But as I got older, I had a longing to get back to the country.” That longing has become Stoke, a project that blends nostalgia with purpose. It’s part working farm, part restaurant, part nonprofit. Each dinner series will use what’s grown on-site, with all profits from the dining series feeding Buccan Provisions, his pandemic-born nonprofit that combats food insecurity.

There’s a sense of symmetry to it—this chef, who feeds Palm Beach’s elite, is now building a place where the soil feeds a mission. “The food system in America is obviously in need of some reform,” he said. “We’re just trying to do our part to contribute to a more healthy way of eating.”

The name, Stoke, nods to the fire that’s defined his cooking for decades, but it also means to fuel—to strengthen. The dinners will be held in a repurposed hay barn overlooking pasture and forest, the air thick with the smell of wood smoke and fresh soil. It’s where Conley can cook the way he wants to: simply, over fire, surrounded by what he grows.

He tells me his kids spend their afternoons running through the fields with the Rapiers’ children. “It fosters a sense of freedom and independence that children don’t get to experience these days,” he said. You can almost hear the satisfaction in that—a chef who’s spent his career chasing perfection finally finding something quieter, steadier.

When the first guests arrive at Stoke later this year, they’ll find the same fire he’s always had—just dedicated to a new end. Conley isn’t after the next accolade. He’s chasing the calm that comes when a place finally feels like home.