[5] Kunz mentored many future celebrity chefs, such as Andrew Carmellini, Floyd Cardoz, Rocco DiSpirito, and Corey Lee.
They married classic French technique with Pan-Asian flavors and ingredients that he became familiar with in Singapore as a child and later in Hong Kong, where he worked as a chef for five years.
In 1994, Ruth Reichl, a food writer, chef, editor, and producer, awarded Kunz a four-star review in the New York Times, the first she had ever given.
Kunz received the Mobil 5 Diamond Award for 1996, 1997, and 1998, was inducted into the Restaurant Hall of Fame in 1998 and the Culinary Institute of America recognized him as a Master of Aesthetics in 2002.
[3] Chris Crowley writing for Grub Street in 2016 called Kunz "perhaps the closest chef New York’s modern restaurant scene has to someone like Paul Bocuse.