Molly Dwyer is a prominent figure in the Boston culinary scene, currently serving as chef de cuisine at Bar Volpe, a Southern Italian-inspired, wood-fired restaurant in South Boston helmed by James Beard Award winner Karen Akunowicz. In 2024, Dwyer was honored as a StarChefs Boston Rising Star. While Dwyer is passionate about food, sustainability and community, she is also an avid runner, who has completed marathons and ultramarathons.
She’s running the 130th Boston Marathon in support of Spoonfuls. This will be her fourth marathon and second in Boston.
“Once you run it, once I feel like you get the bug and want to run it every year, if you can,” she says.
Dwyer says Akunowicz has been a major supporter of Spoonfuls and she, too, has participated in events for the organization that involve the restaurant industry.
“Those were always just the best and most fun events to be at,” she says. “Because not only was it a great cause to be able to give my time to, but those events are always such a community event for the restaurant industry. That was a great place to be able to meet a lot of people for a great cause.”
So, how does Dwyer balance a demanding career with marathon and ultramarathon training? She says it takes both planning and flexibility.
“The biggest part of my job is you think you know what’s going to happen, and you plan the best you can for it, but then something will go sideways,” she says. “I try and lay out how I want to fit everything in at the beginning of the week, and sometimes it takes getting creative.”
She says she’ll fit in runs before work, after work and sometimes to and from work when training for ultramarathons. She says one of her cooks asked her recently, “When do you run, chef? Why do you do this?” “The biggest thing I can say is, if you want to do it, go make the time,” Dwyer says.
And of course, being both a marathoner and a chef, fresh produce plays a huge role for Dwyer. She says menus will change based on seasonal availability.
“Being able to figure out what are the things that we need to use this season, and what’s going to make us excited, and what’s going to be an awesome representation of the seasons on the plate — that produce drives my creative process,” she says.
And that seasonality is something she tries to instill in her cooks. She says she tries to coach them on her mantra of using what’s in season to drive the menus.
“Just because tomatoes are available at any point in the year, that doesn’t mean we’re going to have a tomato salad on the menu,” she says. “Because while those tomatoes are fine, it’s not going to be like an awesome expression of the season and the dish that we want to put out.”
While training, she says she likes to make huge batches of sauteed vegetables and pair them with rice and beef for meal prep, and she carries that seasonality into her vegetables of choice.
Dwyer says she’s excited to run Boston again for such a meaningful cause.
“Every day my job is to feed people, and I feel like we in restaurants probably take for granted how much food we have around us at all times,” she says. “As people who work in the service industry, especially, we realize that we are truly blessed to have that. But also, how can we do that for somebody else? It is super important. I’m super grateful to have the opportunity to raise the money and make sure that other people are also fed.”
