Chef Gerry Hayden of North Fork has ALS

Sad news from Southold. Gerry Hayden, a partner in the four-star North Fork Table and Inn, has ALS, better known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, a progressive neurological disease.

Hayden, 47, is still the restaurant's executive chef. He comes to work every day, composes the menu and oversees the kitchen. Last July, about six months after the diagnosis, he hired the restaurant’s first chef de cuisine, Stephan Bogardus. “I haven’t worked the line in a while,” Hayden said, “but this was the first time I put so much of the cooking in someone else’s hands.”

Bogardus, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, had worked at the North Fork Table for two years but had left to cook for Daniel Boulud at restaurants in Manhattan and Palm Beach.

“The situation is perfect for us,” Hayden said. “The physical part of the job is eluding me. The creative part is not. For Stephan, he wanted to learn the ins and outs of running a restaurant. Under my tutelage, he’s learning what it takes to do what I do.”

ALS is a serious setback, but Hayden remains fully invested in running a world-class restaurant, and bullish on its excellence. “Claudia and I,“ he said, “we are forces to be reckoned with.“

Hayden, twice nominated for the James Beard “best chef Northeast” award, will be the guest of honor at and beneficiary of a star-chef-studded dinner at Colicchio & Sons in Manhattan’s Meat Packing District on June 24. Among the chefs cooking to raise money for Hayden will be Tom Colicchio, David Burke, Alfred Portale, Wylie Dufresne, Marco Canora, Bryan Voltaggio and Michael Mina. Tickets are $250 each and are limited. For more information on the benefit, or to donate to Hayden’s foundation, Hayden’s Heroes, click here.