When Gavin Kaysen announced in March that he would leave his longtime position as Café Boulud’s executive chef to open his own restaurant, plenty of people in the restaurant industry — and those who watch it — were surprised. As Daniel Boulud’s right-hand man, Mr. Kaysen was a player in one of the most successful restaurant empires in New York.

But the bigger surprise was where Mr. Kaysen, 35, planned to open his restaurant, Merchant: not in Manhattan or Brooklyn but in Minneapolis, his hometown. A chef with no shortage of opportunities in New York had decided to leave.

“I had some people ask me candidly, ‘Why? Why leave New York? Why move there?’ ” Mr. Kaysen said.

Traditionally, chefs trained in New York and then stayed, with the goal of running big kitchens or opening their own places. Yes, there have always been chefs who have left, for reasons that are familiar to New Yorkers of any profession: to have more space for children, or to be closer to family (the reason Mr. Kaysen gave) or to have a nicer life at a far lesser cost. But if making it in New York was viewed as the ultimate measure of success, then leaving was something of a rogue move, maybe even an admission of defeat.

No more. Smaller cities are increasingly attractive for New York chefs; there, they find savvy audiences who support innovative restaurants. It’s yet another sign of the change in food culture in the last decade, in which people throughout the country are more interested in where ingredients come from and the creative possibilities of how they are prepared.