Stephanie Buter, chef/co-owner
Stephanie grew up in Sacramento, where she enjoyed yearly trips to the Mendocino coast with her food-loving family. She attended culinary school at the French Culinary Institute in New York City, and worked for several years post-school focusing on savory cooking and whole animal butchery. She then transferred her skills to the pastry world, working in such lauded Bay Area kitchens as Delfina, 20th Century Cafe, Ici Ice Cream, and Boulette’s Larder. Since moving to Fort Bragg in 2020 she has worked both in the kitchen and in the front of house with her friends at FogEater Cafe in Mendocino.
Nicholas Dorgan, chef/co-owner
Nicholas was born in an unremarkable stretch of upstate New York where food was more of a function than a formality. Through happenstance and blind luck he found himself working in high end grocery retail throughout college and beyond. Sensing an intellectual dead end and curious for more, he packed up to New York City, enrolled at the French Culinary Institute, and quickly found a partner in crime named Stephanie Butler. He spent the next decade honing his craft in restaurants around NYC and the Bay Area. Most notably the chef of Pizzeria Delfina in San Francisco, as well as a stint in private events before landing on the North Coast in late 2020.
Stephanie and Nick share a deep love of classic American diners, steakhouses, and roadhouses. They draw inspiration from California classics like Duarte’s Roadhouse in Pescadero and Original Joe’s and the Swan Oyster Depot in San Francisco. They also love unpretentious and soulful French bistro cooking a la Bistro Jeanty and Bouchon in Napa. Floyd and Connie’s also peppers in influences from their favorite restaurants in New York and London, giving their vision a subtle worldly refinement. Their intention is to meld global and American ideas, flavors, and techniques to a classic American environment supported by a backbone of California agriculture, fishing, and ranching.
