When the new Belmont Park opens its gates on September 18, the menus will belong to someone who grew up next door. The New York Racing Association, together with hospitality partner Levy and the agency Elevate, announced Thursday that Marc Forgione, the Iron Chef winner raised in Bellerose in the shadow of the track, will serve as the signature chef of the rebuilt racetrack.

It is the kind of hire that usually goes to a celebrity with no connection to the building. This one went to a neighborhood kid who happens to have become one of New York's most decorated chefs.

From the shadow of the grandstand to a Michelin star

Forgione grew up in Bellerose, at the Queens-Nassau line, close enough to Belmont that NYRA's own announcement describes him as having been raised in the shadow of the park. Cooking was the family business: his father is Larry Forgione, the chef whose Manhattan restaurant An American Place helped define modern American cooking, and Marc started working in its kitchen at 16.

The younger Forgione built his own name fast. His Tribeca dining room, Restaurant Marc Forgione, earned a Michelin star and made him, at the time, the youngest American-born chef to hold the honor in consecutive years. In 2010 he won the third season of The Next Iron Chef, joining the Food Network's roster of battling chefs. Today he runs the Tribeca restaurant along with Peasant, the wood-fired Italian standby in NoLita.

Now the work is bringing him back to the fence line he started from.

What he will actually be cooking

The signature chef role is not a ribbon-cutting cameo. According to the announcement, Forgione will develop and execute the menus across the new building's premium spaces, including the Turf Club Restaurant and Lounge, the Homestretch Market and Big Red's Sports Bar, with seasonal menus, chef's tables and rotating a la carte offerings. He will also oversee a beverage program built around wine and cocktails designed for long afternoons of racing.

Dishes that made his restaurants famous are making the trip east with him. The plan calls for versions of his hiramasa tartare, his chili lobster and his cote de boeuf to appear at Belmont, along with the 10-minute cookies that Tribeca regulars order before their entrees arrive.

The appointment comes as part of a wider deal: NYRA extended and expanded its partnership with Levy, the Chicago-based company that runs food and hospitality at arenas and stadiums across the country, to cover its venues, with Elevate brokering the chef partnership and shaping its creative direction.

The building he is walking into

The kitchen assignment is enormous. Belmont Park has been closed for full-scale racing while the state-backed rebuild, financed with a $455 million loan from New York State, replaced the aging grandstand with a new clubhouse. When racing returns on September 18, the first two floors will be open, including the premium dining rooms Forgione is programming, with the upper three floors finishing by early next year.

The fall meet is being treated as a homecoming for the sport on Long Island. The Belmont Stakes itself returns to its namesake track next June after three years at Saratoga, and the reopening weekend has been built out like a festival, with country star Dierks Bentley booked to perform.

For Long Islanders, the Forgione hire changes what a day at the new Belmont looks like. The old track's food was famously beside the point. The new one is betting that residents will come for the horses and stay for a meal from a chef whose story started a few furlongs away, served in rooms overlooking the stretch he grew up beside.