It may have been winning the 2010 season of Food Network’s The Next Iron Chef that brought chef Marc Forgione and his signature mohawk into America’s consciousness. But Forgione has been working his way around a restaurant kitchen since he was 16, on the line at An American Place, his father Larry’s lauded tribute to food and cooking born in the U.S.A. Now, with his eponymous NYC Restaurant Marc Forgione, he’s had the honor of being the youngest American-born chef/owner to receive a Michelin star, not once but three years in a row. Forgione “excels at simplicity,” wrote Sam Sifton of the New York Times, in a glowing review of the “rustic and urban” restaurant. In spring 2014, the chef had his first cookbook was published: Marc Forgione: Recipes and Stories from the Acclaimed Chef and Restaurant.

A graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s School of Hotel and Restaurant Management, Forgione joined the New York kitchens of chef Patricia Yeo’s AZ, Kazuto Matsusaka’s Above, and Laurent Tourondel’s BLT Steak, before spending time in France under the tutelage of Michel Guérard, the father of “cuisine minceur,” and Daniel Boulud (“my biggest influence in France,” Forgione says).

In 2012 Forgione opened American Cut, in Atlantic City’s Revel Resort and Casino, an old-world take on the steakhouse. And, with his sommelier Matt Conway he launched a collection of private-label wines from Languedoc and the Loire—the label, of course, featuring Forgione’s mohawk in silhouette. Next up, an American Cut is coming to Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood.

It’s not exactly “like father, like son” when it comes to the Forgiones, but, says Marc, growing up with the “Godfather of American Cuisine” has given him a reverence for local ingredients that would be hard to find anywhere else.