The Dish: This chef wants a Michelin star. First, he has to fill seats.

At 12 years old, Loic Sany carried his grandmother’s groceries through their Cameroonian street market as they searched for nutmeg, black peppercorns and peanut butter to make her signature beef suya.

Now, at 33, the West African dish is a focal point of the menu at his new downtown Baltimore restaurant. Unlike his other projects and stints at Michelin-starred establishments, Nest is all about showcasing Sany.

He plans to serve a soy-marinated salad that incorporates mangoes, which he grew up eating regularly in Cameroon. Hyperseasonal dishes from lamb carpaccio to lobster croquettes will be rotated through the menu in the same style as chef Anthony Secviar’s Protégé restaurant in Palo Alto, California, where Sany worked as a sous chef, helping the restaurant win a Michelin star in its first eight months. He’ll also make black pepper cheesecake, inspired by the savory desserts mastered by chef Patrick O’Connell at The Inn at Little Washington — where Sany once commuted four hours daily to jumpstart his career.

“I want to be ‘the people’s chef,’” said Sany, who is now also the solo owner behind Caribbean restaurant Jerk at Nite, located one floor below Nest at 21 N. Eutaw St. “I want them to see this young guy from Cameroon, who came here barely speaking English, that picked up something and stuck with it.”

Over the last 15 years, Sany has opened three Jerk at Nite locations alongside business partners Denville Myrie and Kadeem Todd, as well as one franchisee. Like other hopefuls in the industry, Sany long dreamed of a place all his own. “I feel like kids get out of culinary school, they want to call themselves chefs,” he said.

“But that’s a lot, to be a chef.”

Nest is a project two years in the making. What Sany initially teased as a fine-dining concept in April has morphed into more of a bar with highly technical snacks. But bringing that bar to fruition will be a challenge: Sany does not yet have a liquor license for his new concept — or for Jerk at Nite, which has previously been accused of continuing to sell drinks regardless after not meeting the criteria for a license in 2024.

“You can’t sustain a restaurant that big while not selling liquor‚” Sany said, adding that while Jerk at Nite tried to sell alcohol in the past, he has tried to run the restaurant by “the law and move accordingly by the books” since taking over the space and its debts earlier this year.

He has also invested $10,000 of his own money into Nest, in the hopes that the new concept will bring in more cash flow as Jerk at Nite inches toward profitability and paying off multiple loans.

Across the country, independent restaurants in 2026 face rising costs and shrinking margins as the industry grows more challenging. Casual dining places especially are at risk of closure. Opportunities for new talent to become their own operators are scarce, forcing more people to stretch into new markets and pursue bold ideas.

Ahead of Nest’s opening, tentatively set for mid-June, Sany admitted he never expected to open his first solo concept in Baltimore.

“There’s no way it will succeed,” he recalled people telling him when he pitched the idea of his fine-dining restaurant about a block south of Lexington Market. “People will be afraid.”

When Jerk at Nite first opened in 2024, the Baltimore Police Department said they had increased patrols in the area, and Downtown Partnership of Baltimore President Shelonda Stokes said they were working collaboratively to build a more welcoming and thriving neighborhood.

Since then, Sany said, he has worked with the nearby Hippodrome Theatre to clean up the surrounding blocks, including asking members of the community, some of whom are unhoused, not to crowd the eatery during business hours. “Now that they’re migrating there’s really nothing to worry about,” he said.

Nest’s opening “reflects a growing confidence among business owners in this corridor and the opportunity they see here,” Stokes said in a statement Monday. Stokes, who has hosted events in Sany’s “beautifully designed and intimate” new space, said “outdated perceptions of this part of Downtown are exactly what investments like this help dismantle.”

The experience of operating in the area taught Sany a lot about running a restaurant. “You have your staff and all their responsibilities on your shoulders,” he said.

He describes the job as part mentor, coach and entrepreneur. While he’d like to focus on food alone, there’s so much more that comes with wearing the chef’s jacket — including reading customer feedback online. Sany said he tries to check every Instagram comment, Google and Yelp review.

“Every like 30 minutes, I’m always refreshing it,” he said. The internet doesn’t offer grace, he explained, and is another world the young chef never expected to navigate.

With Nest, the insecurity is heightened. Now, more than ever, Sany is on the menu.

“We’re not Atlas Group where we have investors and millions of dollars behind us,” he said of the Baltimore-based hospitality group, adding that the white-tablecloth experience he initially hoped to deliver wasn’t right financially or conceptually for the space.

Instead, the bar is painted purple, with Ravens decals and photos of famous Baltimore figures on the wall. High ceilings and plush couches create more of a lounge ambience, heightened by the white bookshelf that functions as a speakeasy-type door at the entryway, splitting the stairway between Jerk at Nite and Nest.

Sany describes his venture as a career step that could lead to recognition, and maybe more restaurants and a Michelin star.

When the nerves get overwhelming, he tries to think of his grandmother, who died shortly after he immigrated over a decade ago, and of a time when cooking as a job felt like a far simpler life to lead.

“She just wanted people to have a good meal and feel fed, and until that happens, she ain’t happy,” he said. “And that’s the same approach I have.”