What happens when a wunderkind chef who’s 29 teams with a retired McDonald’s chieftan on a restaurant in a strip mall?
The short answer: Terrific food with fun surprises on every plate.
This week, Bicyclette Cookshop made national news by earning a competitive spot on USA Today’s 2025 Restaurants of the Year list.
“It’s truly an honor to be named one of USA Today’s restaurants of the year. ‘Pathologically positive’ really captures the spirit we’ve cultivated. I’m a cheerleader, a seeker and adventurer driven by a constant urge to explore and innovate,” said Kayla Pfeiffer, the restaurant’s executive chef and partner.
What’s the best restaurant near you? Check out USA TODAY’s 2025 Restaurants of the Year.
Inside look at how USA TODAY chose its Restaurants of the Year for 2025
Playful, not pretentious
Like Rene Magritte, the surrealist painter acclaimed for presenting familiar objects and subjects in unfamiliar ways, Pfeiffer uses food as her medium.
And while most parents tell their kids not to play with food, I suspect Pfeiffer’s dad, a chef and restaurant owner in Tequesta, Florida, during her grammar school years, might have encouraged her to do just that.
Her next stop after Jupiter High? The prestigious Culinary Institute of America.
Post-CIA, she headed to New York City as a line cook at Andrew Carmellini’s The Dutch, a New York Times’ Top 10 pick in 2011.
Next, she was chef de partie at Terrence Brennan’s The Roundhouse in Beacon, New York, where nose-to-tail butchering skills would come in handy when tasked to cook something tasty with alligator hearts on Food Network’s “Chopped,” which she handily won.
While early executive chef positions executing others’ concepts earned her high praise from local critics, in 2023 at Bicyclette, she finally had a kitchen to call her own.
What to order at Bicyclette Cookshop
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With the artistic freedom to do her thing, Pfeiffer is having a ball with next-level takes on elevated, eclectic comfort food where every intentional ingredient is well-thought-out.
At lunch and dinner, Pfeiffer’s menu is divvied into snacks, shareables you won’t want to share and mains.
Each dish boasts one clever surprise after another without feeling twee or pretentious.
Take caviar paired with crunchy Bugles, the crispy corn snack pack. Eliciting giggles and oohs at our table, the genius $22 presentation allows for perfectly sized scoops of roe and creme fraiche. The oeufs’ tin recalls classic rock album covers.
Her sausage-y spuds riffing on Taco Bell’s “Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes” are fried in chorizo oil then topped with chipotle hollandaise.
Remember McDonald’s “two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce” etc. jingle?
Here, it’s Wagyu and Pfeiffer swaps slices of standard American for gooey raclette and Swiss. Potato chips stuck on oozing melted cheese add visual and crunch components contrasting toothsome potato wedges.
That special sauce? Kimchi aioli.
The burger is a fitting tribute to backer Louie Mele, a retired McDonald’s president in Canada (where he started as a fry guy) and Italy before moving to Southwest Florida.
He also owns Naples Cyclery next door and turned his adjacent Fit and Fuel café over to Pfeiffer, giving her carte blanche to reimagine it from menu to décor.
When he pleaded for a Milanese on the menu, she swapped it for schnitzels, offering up chicken and swordfish versions.
Potent potables are great too, especially “Flaquita’s Favorite,” a mezcal meets tequila nod to her “skinny girl” nickname, though she calls herself a “culinary badass.”
A “Chopped” champ’s confession
During her “Chopped” episode’s finale, Pfeiffer confessed desserts aren’t her jam and she winged that course.
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After the show aired, she hired pastry chef Corie Greenberg, whose innovative take on sweets scored a NY Times’ feature a few years ago.
It’s the perfect collaboration.
See the full menu.
Details: 819 Vanderbilt Beach Road at Pavilion, Naples, FL; 239-514-3333; bicyclettecookshop.com
This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Naples restaurant named one of best in US
