They say the harder you work, the luckier you get. While certainly true, hard-working chef Rochelle Daniel also has the luck of the Irish. “While I grew up in Arizona, my grandparents were from Ireland,” says Daniel. “I distinctly remember bringing them in–not to mention their amazing soda breads and other native dishes including homemade cheeses and butters–for show and tell in school, bragging to the class that grandpa was a real-life leprechaun.”
Daniel also grew up close to her mom, who trained professional athletes and others at Arrowhead Country Club. “I started helping out at the country club young, and by 14 walked into the kitchen and quickly fell in love. I knew even at that young age that the kitchen would be my home,” says Daniel, who graduated from Sunrise Mountain High School in 2003 and immediately earned acceptance into Scottsdale Culinary Institute.
During the program and immediately after, Daniel gained experience by working in the banquet and catering departments at Painted Horse Café, Four Seasons Resort Scottsdale at Troon North, and Continental Catering. “At 20, I took a line cook job at Zinc Bistro in Scottsdale, which at the time was called the hardest kitchen in which to work in Arizona given the level of talent, not to mention sheer size of the guys in the kitchen,” says Daniel, noting that in addition to mentoring under the award-winning Matt Carter, she also worked with chef Adam Schop–who now helms Miss Lilys in New York, Dubai, Negril and more–and Jeremy McMillan–well-known for his success on The Cooking Channe–who both stand at more than six-foot-three in stature.
While small in stature in comparison to her towering culinary colleagues, Daniel proved she was big on talent. By 24, Daniel was running the kitchen at the iconic eatery, ultimately leading it for several years before moving to Sedona for a massive project.
“I was honored to be recruited by L’Auberge de Sedona to help re-imagine their restaurant program,” says Daniel. “I moved up north–to Flagstaff, where I commuted to Sedona daily–in 2015 to help develop and launch Cress on Oak Creek, falling in love with northern Arizona along the way.” The only thing she didn’t love about the experience was the 14-hours days that go into running a full resort culinary operation. “In addition to crafting dishes, you are budgeting, buying, planning banquets, overseeing room service and about a dozen other things, and after a while, they do take their toll, even in one of the most beautiful places on earth,” says Daniel.
By the mid-2010s, Daniel was ready to get back into a restaurant. “At that time, Matt [Carter] was preparing to open Fat Ox in Scottsdale, and he had a plan that would allow me to eventually take an ownership stake in the eatery in addition to serving as its executive chef,” says Daniel, who reunited with Carter and opened Fat Ox in 2016. With immediate success, Daniel wowed crowds from across the globe with her take on northern Italian delicacies, seafood preparations, and more Avant Garde specials. “I ultimately decided against ownership and kept to cooking, but it wasn’t long before ownership–albeit of something far away from Scottsdale–decided to set its sights on me,” says Daniel.
A group of investors began visiting Daniel at Fat Ox, dining while attempting to lure her back to her beloved Flagstaff for the opportunity of a lifetime. “They had a vision for three restaurants in the area, starting with a steakhouse,” says Daniel. “Just as I finished the business plan; the pandemic hit.” The pandemic shifted the vision of the steakhouse.
“Quite organically, I gravitated toward an elevated dining concept beyond a steakhouse, a place where I could showcase a little of everything based on seasonality, but also on what my team was able to forage ourselves, a passion of mine,” says Daniel, who opened Atria in the space that was once San Felipe’s in 2021.
Daniel decided on the name of the 93-seat eatery years ago. “It has a few personal meanings to me,” says Daniel. “First, atria is the word for atrium if plural, which represents our foraged ingredients. Given the openness of an atrium, it also means freedom to me to do and dream up what we want. Finally, the two atria in our bodies are responsible for getting our blood pumping, the feeling I want all my guests to have when they taste our food and drinks.”
Modern American but with global influences, Atria not only took Arizona by storm, but the nation, earning Daniel a James Beard nomination as among the best Emerging Chefs in the United States earlier this year.
This summer, Daniel will launch a new seasonal menu at Atria while preparing to break ground on the other concepts previously mentioned, though there are now four total versus the initial three. “You can expect a speakeasy, pub, and even that steakhouse we first talked about in coming years from my team, not to mention an always-evolving culinary perspective at Atria, of course,” says Daniel. It is safe to say that tastebuds across Arizona, and the world, cannot wait.
Written by Alison Bailin Batz
Photography by Luke Irvin