Chef Michael Chiarello, here in Miami in 2015, is dead at 61.

Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images

Michael Chiarello, a prominent chef known for appearing on “Easy Entertaining with Michael Chiarello” and “Top Chef,” has died. He was 61. 

Chiarello’s company Gruppo Chiarello said in a statement sent to CNN that the restaurateur died on Saturday in Napa. He was being treated for an acute allergic reaction resulting in anaphylactic shock, the company’s statement said.

“We deeply mourn the loss of our beloved patriarch Michael. His culinary brilliance, boundless creativity, and unwavering commitment to family were at the core of his being. He brought people together through the joy of shared meals, fostering lasting memories around the table,” the Chiarello family shared in a statement.

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The statement continued, “As we navigate this profound loss, we hold dear the moments we cherished with him, both in his kitchens and in our hearts. His legacy will forever live on in the love he poured into every dish and the passion he instilled in all of us to savor life’s flavors.”

The chef is known for his time hosting his namesake Food Network series, “Easy Entertaining with Michael Chiarello,” for 10 seasons beginning in 2003. The series won three Emmys between 2003 and 2006. (Food Network and CNN are both part of Warner Bros. Discovery.)

Chiarello appeared on a number of other cooking series such as “Top Chef,” “Top Chef Masters,” “The Next Iron Chef,” “Iron Chef America” and “Supermarket Superstar,” which debuted in 2013.

He also has appeared as a guest chef on “The Today Show,” “CBS Early Show,” “Regis & Kathy” and “The View.”

The California native graduated from the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, NY in 1982 and was named Food & Wine Magazine’s Chef of the Year in 1985. Chiarello was also named Chef of the Year by his alma mater in 1995.

He went on to open his first restaurant, Tra Vigne, in Napa Valley in 1986 and has since developed and opened over 10 restaurants in the Northern California region, including his popular eateries Bottega and Coqueta.

Chiarello has authored over eight cookbooks since 1995, and opened the Chiarello Family Vineyards in the late ’90s.

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AP file, 2006

Russell Banks

Russell Banks, an award-winning fiction writer who rooted such novels as “Affliction” and “The Sweet Hereafter” in the wintry, rural communities of his native Northeast and imagined the dreams and downfalls of everyone from modern blue-collar workers to the radical abolitionist John Brown in “Cloudsplitter,” died Jan. 7, 2023. He was 82.

AP file, 2004

Cardinal George Pell

Cardinal George Pell, a onetime financial adviser to Pope Francis who spent 404 days in solitary confinement in his native Australia on child sex abuse charges before his convictions were overturned, died Jan. 10, 2023. He was 81.

AP file, 2018

Ken Block

Ken Block, a motorsports icon known for his stunt driving and for co-founding the action sports apparel brand DC Shoes, died Jan. 2, 2023, in a snowmobiling accident near his home in Utah. Block rose to fame as a rally car driver and in 2005 was awarded Rally America’s Rookie of the Year honors.

AP file, 2013

Walter Cunningham

Walter Cunningham, the last surviving astronaut from the first successful crewed space mission in NASA’s Apollo program, died Jan. 3, 2023. He was 90. Cunningham was one of three astronauts aboard the 1968 Apollo 7 mission, an 11-day spaceflight that beamed live television broadcasts as they orbited Earth, paving the way for the moon landing less than a year later.

AP file, 2014

Anton Walkes

Professional soccer player Anton Walkes died Jan. 18, 2023, from injuries he sustained in a boat crash off the coast of Miami. He was 25. Walkes began his career with English Premier League club Tottenham and also played for Portsmouth before signing with Atlanta United in MLS. He joined Charlotte for the club’s debut MLS season in 2022.

AP file, 2017

Pat Schroeder

Former U.S. Rep. Pat Schroeder, a pioneer for women’s and family rights in Congress, died March 13, 2023. She was 82. Schroeder took on the powerful elite with her rapier wit and antics for 24 years, shaking up stodgy government institutions by forcing them to acknowledge that women had a role in government. She was elected to Congress in Colorado in 1972 and won easy reelection 11 times from her safe district in Denver.

AP file, 1999

Seymour Stein

Seymour Stein, the brash, prescient and highly successful founder of Sire Records who helped launched the careers of Madonna, Talking Heads and many others, died April 2, 2023, at age 80. Stein helped found the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation and was himself inducted into the Rock Hall in 2005.

AP file, 2005

Klaus Teuber

Klaus Teuber, creator of the hugely popular Catan board game in which players compete to build settlements on a fictional island, died April 1, 2023. He was 70. The board game, originally called The Settlers of Catan when introduced in 1995 and based on a set of hexagonal tiles, has sold tens of millions of copies and is available in more than 40 languages.

AP file, 1995

Ginnie Newhart

Ginnie Newhart, who was married to comedy legend Bob Newhart for six decades and inspired the classic ending of his “Newhart” series, died April 23, 2023. She was 82.

AP file, 1985

Vida Blue

Vida Blue, a hard-throwing left-hander who became one of baseball’s biggest draws in the early 1970s and helped lead the brash A’s to three straight World Series titles before his career was derailed by drug problems, died May 6, 2023. He was 73.

AP file, 1976

Martin Amis

British novelist Martin Amis, who brought a rock ‘n’ roll sensibility to his stories and lifestyle, died May 20, 2023. He was 73. Amis was a leading voice among a generation of writers that included his good friend, the late Christopher Hitchens, Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie. Among his best-known works were “Money,” a satire about consumerism in London, “The Information” and “London Fields,” along with his 2000 memoir, “Experience.”

AP file, 2012

Doyle Brunson

Doyle Brunson, one of the most influential poker players of all time and a two-time world champion, died May 14, 2023. He was 89. Brunson, called the Godfather of Poker and also known as “Texas Dolly,” won 10 World Series of Poker tournaments — second only to Phil Hellmuth’s 16. He also captured world championships in 1976 and 1977 and was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 1988.

AP file, 2011

Hodding Carter III

Hodding Carter III, a Mississippi journalist and civil rights activist who as U.S. State Department spokesman informed Americans about the Iran hostage crisis and later won awards for his televised documentaries, died May 11, 2023. He was 88.

AP file, 2003

Ray Stevenson

Ray Stevenson, who played the villainous British governor in “RRR,” an Asgardian warrior in the “Thor” films, and a member of the 13th Legion in HBO’s “Rome,” died May 21, 2023. He was 58. He made his film debut in Paul Greengrass’s 1998 film “The Theory of Flight.” In 2004, he appeared in Antoine Fuqua’s “King Arthur” as a knight of the round table and several years later played the lead in the pre-Disney Marvel adaptation “Punisher: War Zone.” Though “Punisher” was not the best-reviewed film, he’d get another taste of Marvel in the first three “Thor” films, in which he played Volstagg. Other prominent film roles included the “Divergent” trilogy, “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” and “The Transporter: Refueled.”

AP file, 2017

Astrud Gilberto

Astrud Gilberto, the Brazilian singer, songwriter and entertainer whose off-hand, English-language cameo on “The Girl from Ipanema” made her a worldwide voice of bossa nova, died June 5, 2023, at age 83.

AP file, 1981

Tori Bowie

U.S. Olympic champion sprinter Tori Bowie died May 2, 2023, from complications of childbirth, according to an autopsy report. At the 2016 Rio Olympics, Bowie won silver in the 100 and bronze in the 200. She then ran the anchor leg on a 4×100 team with Tianna Bartoletta, Allyson Felix and English Gardner to take gold.

AP file, 2017

Silvio Berlusconi

Silvio Berlusconi, the boastful billionaire media mogul who was Italy’s longest-serving premier despite scandals over his sex-fueled parties and allegations of corruption, died June 12, 2023. He was 86. A onetime cruise ship crooner, Berlusconi used his television networks and immense wealth to launch his long political career, inspiring both loyalty and loathing.

AP file, 2021

John Goodenough

John Goodenough, who shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work developing the lithium-ion battery that transformed technology with rechargeable power for devices ranging from cellphones, computers, and pacemakers to electric cars, died June 25, 2023, at age 100.

AP file, 2019

Coco Lee

Coco Lee, a Hong Kong-born singer and songwriter who had a highly successful career in Asia, has died by suicide July 5, 2023. She was 48. She was the first Chinese singer to break into the American market, and her English song “Do You Want My Love” charted at #4 on Billboard’s Hot Dance Breakouts chart in December 1999.

If you or someone you know exhibits warning signs of suicide, call 1-800-273-TALK, text 741741 or visit suicidepreventionlifeline.org.

AP file, 2005

Jane Birkin

Actor and singer Jane Birkin, who made France her home and charmed the country with her English grace, natural style and social activism, died July 16, 2023, at age 76. The London-born star and fashion icon was known for her musical and romantic relationship with French singer Serge Gainsbourg. Their songs notably included the steamy “Je t’aime moi non plus” (“I Love You, Me Neither”). Birkin’s ethereal, British-accented singing voice interlaced with his gruff baritone in the 1969 duet that helped make her famous and was forbidden in Italy after being denounced in the Vatican newspaper.

AP file, 2021

William Friedkin

William Friedkin, the generation-defining director who brought a visceral realism to 1970s hits “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist” and was quickly anointed one of Hollywood’s top directors when he was only in his 30s, died Aug. 7, 2023. He was 87. Friedkin won the best director Oscar for “The French Connection.”

AP file, 2011

Steve Harwell

Steve Harwell, the longtime frontman of the Grammy-nominated pop rock band Smash Mouth died Sept. 4, 2023. He was 56. Smash Mouth was known for hits including “All Star” and “Then The Morning Comes.”

AP file, 2008

Michael McGrath

Michael McGrath, a Broadway character actor who shined in zany, feel-good musicals and won a Tony Award for “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” died Sept. 14, 2023. He was 65. McGrath was in over a dozen Broadway shows including “Plaza Suite,” “She Loves Me,” “Tootsie” and “Spamalot” as well as on television as the sidekick to Martin Short on “The Martin Short Show.”

AP file, 2012

Fernando Botero

Renowned Colombian painter and sculptor Fernando Botero, whose depictions of people and objects in plump, exaggerated forms became emblems of Colombian art around the world, died Sept. 15, 2023. He was 91.

AP file, 2013

David McCallum

Actor David McCallum, who became a teen heartthrob in the hit series “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” in the 1960s and was the eccentric medical examiner in the popular “NCIS” 40 years later, died Sept. 25, 2023. He was 90. McCallum’s work with “U.N.C.L.E.” brought him two Emmy nominations, and he got a third as an educator struggling with alcoholism in a 1969 Hallmark Hall of Fame drama called “Teacher, Teacher.” McCallum returned to television in 2003 in another series with an agency known by its initials — CBS’ “NCIS.”

AP file, 1975

Brooks Robinson

Hall of Fame third baseman Brooks Robinson, whose deft glovework and folksy manner made him one of the most beloved and accomplished athletes in Baltimore history, died Sept. 26, 2023. He was 86. Coming of age before the free agent era, Robinson spent his entire 23-year career with the Orioles. He almost single-handedly helped Baltimore defeat Cincinnati in the 1970 World Series and homered in Game 1 of the Orioles’ 1966 sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers for their first crown. Robinson participated in 18 All-Star Games, won 16 consecutive Gold Gloves and earned the 1964 AL Most Valuable Player award after batting .318 with 28 home runs and a league-leading 118 RBIs.

AP file, 2007

Michael Gambon

Veteran actor Michael Gambon, who was known to many for his portrayal of Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore in six of the eight “Harry Potter” films, died Sept. 28, 2023. He was 82. No matter what role he took on in a career that lasted more than five decades, Gambon was always instantly recognizable by the deep and drawling tones of his voice. He was cast as the much-loved Dumbledore after the death of his predecessor, Richard Harris, in 2002.

AP file, 2011

Tim Wakefield

Tim Wakefield, the knuckleballing workhorse of the Red Sox pitching staff who bounced back after giving up a season-ending home run to the Yankees in the 2003 playoffs to help Boston win its curse-busting World Series title the following year, died Oct. 1, 2023. He was 57.

AP file, 2009

Dick Butkus

Dick Butkus, a middle linebacker for the Chicago Bears whose speed and ferocity set the standards for the position in the modern era, died Oct. 5, 2023. He was 80. Butkus was a first-team All-Pro five times and made the Pro Bowl in eight of his nine seasons before a knee injury forced him to retire at 31. He was the quintessential Monster of the Midway and was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979, his first year of eligibility. Trading on his image as the toughest guy in the room, Butkus enjoyed a long second career as a sports broadcaster, an actor in movies and TV series, and a sought-after pitchman for products ranging from antifreeze to beer.

AP file, 2019

Michael Chiarello

Michael Chiarello, a chef known for his Italian-inspired Californian restaurants who won an Emmy Award for best host for “Easy Entertaining With Michael Chiarello” and appeared on Bravo’s “Top Chef” and “Top Chef Masters,” died Oct. 6, 2023. He was 61.

AP file, 2013

Piper Laurie

Piper Laurie, the strong-willed, Oscar-nominated actor who performed in acclaimed roles despite at one point abandoning acting altogether in search of a “more meaningful” life, died Oct. 14, 2023. She was 91. Laurie arrived in Hollywood in 1949 as Rosetta Jacobs and was quickly given a string of starring roles with Ronald Reagan, Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis, among others. She went on to receive Academy Award nominations for three distinct films: The 1961 poolroom drama “The Hustler”; the film version of Stephen King’s horror classic “Carrie,” in 1976; and the romantic drama “Children of a Lesser God,” in 1986. She also appeared in several acclaimed roles on television and the stage, including in David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” in the 1990s as the villainous Catherine Martell.

AP file, 2009

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Canopy by Hilton San Francisco SoMa announces the appointment of Michelle Mathews as the hotel’s Executive Chef. In this role, Chef Mathews will oversee the culinary operations of three onsite food and beverage outlets: Shelby’s Rooftop, The Social, and Bean Bar, as well as lead the hotel’s social catering program.

Born in Okinawa, Japan, Chef Mathews spent a significant portion of her childhood traveling the world, influenced by the unique flavors of Spain, France, East Asia and Morocco. Drawing inspiration from her multicultural background, Chef Mathews aims to bring her global experiences to the forefront of the hotel’s food and beverage programs, keeping the menus elevated yet approachable.

At Shelby’s Rooftop, a sophisticated retreat that offers 270-degree views of downtown San Francisco, Mathews intends to provide an elevated dining experience that caters to a diverse range of palates. Handcrafted cocktails will pair harmoniously with elevated dishes such as a ribeye steak, local whole fish, classic Paella Valenciana or a twist on a classic burger featuring a rich wagyu interpretation.

Chef Mathews will develop tasting menus at the hotel’s lobby bar, The Social; and oversee operations of Bean Bar, the hotel’s coffee and grab-and-go concept, offering beautifully prepared salads and sandwiches, and talented baristas that each bring their own unique styles and expertise to their crafts.

For more than 12 years, Chef Mathews has delighted San Francisco with her culinary expertise, having served as executive chef at several renowned establishments. Prior to moving to California, Chef Mathews honed her craft at iconic New York City restaurants, including the Michelin-starred Eleven Madison Park.

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It’s no exaggeration to say that Marlena, the affordable fixed-price restaurant on the side of a hill in Bernal Heights, has been one of San Francisco’s culinary breakthrough stars for the past three years. The restaurant relocated to the former premises of the Hillside Supper Club in August 2020, a time we now remember as the peak of the pandemic, and served sandwiches to go before plunging a foot into indoor dining in November – only to along with every other restaurant in the city to be closed due to a surge in COVID cases. Throughout the spring, the restaurant reopened for al fresco dining and then indoors before being awarded a coveted Michelin star in autumn 2021.

All along, husband-and-wife chefs David Fisher and Serena Chow Fisher have been at the helm, even naming the company in honor of David’s late mother. Together with Hi Neighbor Hospitality Group’s Ryan Cole, they guided the restaurant through the turmoil of the pandemic, then closed for renovations last summer before moving again in the fall.

In short: It was a wild rollercoaster ride and an undeniable success. But on Friday, June 30, the Fishers say they want out.

The couple confirmed to Eater SF on Friday that they were splitting from Marlena effective immediately, announcing the fact in an Instagram post on Friday night. “It’s just becoming something that we don’t want to be a part of anymore,” David said in a recent conversation with Eater SF.

Although the couple have been the faces of the acclaimed restaurant for three years, they explain that they don’t own the company; According to the restaurant’s liquor license, the owner is Bouillon LLC, which is managed by Stephane Roulland, who is also listed as CEO. According to the Fishers, their relationship with the owner has deteriorated to the point where they are unable to continue working at the restaurant. In the post, they give “a conflict with the owner of Marlena about different ideas of hospitality and integrity” as the reason for the departure. Eater SF has reached out to Roulland and will update if we hear anything.

It’s uncertain whether Marlena will remain open without the chef couple who have earned the restaurant a spot in the Michelin Guide. In August 2021, the Guide praised how the couple “creates both the savory and sweet side of things” with “precise technique and subtle yet imaginative use of ingredients.”

As previously reported, the Fishers and Cole are already working on a new restaurant that will take over the premises of the former Gardenia’s at 1963 Sutter Street. The spirits license lists the company name as 7 Adams, but the trio tell Eater SF the vision for the restaurant is still taking shape. Cole, who was hired as a consultant during Marlena’s early days, hasn’t been part of the restaurant team since April.

This is an evolving story and Eater SF will be updated as more details become available.

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The post The Chef Couple Behind San Francisco’s Michelin-Starred Restaurant Marlena Simply Stop appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

In 2020, a five-alarm fire burned chef Simileoluwa Adebajo’s commissary kitchen to the ground. The only reason she wasn’t in the San Francisco building was because she had slept in for the first time in years.

“As my bus approached the downtown area, I could see this huge plume of smoke,” says Adebajo, chef-owner of Èkó Kitchen, the city’s only Nigerian restaurant and catering company. “As I got closer my brain started to boot and put the location at my kitchen.”

On that hot July day, her equipment and inventory — mostly imported from Nigeria — had been destroyed. But in a short time, amid a pandemic that had shifted the way people eat, Adebajo had evolved her business and fed thousands of people in need with comforting dishes like spicy jollof rice and honey bean porridge. To say she’s been very busy is an understatement.

This month alone, Adebajo is hosting a Feb. 18 pop-up dinner, curating virtual cooking classes for Black History Month and celebrating the release of her self-published cookbook, “From Èkó with Love: A Guide to Modern Nigerian Cooking” (Èkó Kitchen LLC, $50). Did we mention she is 26?

“She has great ambition and energy and is very inspiring to work with,” says Fabien Santos, owner of Merkado, the South Beach restaurant where Èkó Kitchen operates its catering and Saturday take-out. “Her food is something I had never tasted before. The depth of flavor is something you can really taste.”

In 2018, Adebajo quit her job as a financial analyst at Amazon’s Twitch to found Èkó Kitchen after seeing that Nigerian food was nowhere to be found in San Francisco’s otherwise diverse dining scene. (The East Bay, however, has two Nigerian spots: Hayward’s Golden Safari, which opened in 2017, and West Oakland’s newer Jolly-Jolly Coffee & Kitchen.) Adebajo also noticed that few people knew much about her home city of Lagos, Africa’s largest metropolis, beyond its social unrest.

Adebajo, who was born in New York but spent 14 years living in Lagos before moving to San Francisco for graduate school, describes Nigerian food as bold, audacious and spicy.

Simileoluwa Adebajo, chef-owner of Eko— Kitchen, San Francisco’s first Nigerian restaurant, serves up a dish of goat asun with fried plantains (dodo) and sweet potatoes, Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group )

“It is very much like Nigerian people,” says Adebajo, who likes to steal a glance at diners who are tasting Nigerian food for the first time. “I want to see the emotion on their face, the shock and wonder. I want them to feel transported. So, I want them to feel comforted. It isn’t the healthiest food, but it is opening their eyes to a whole new world.”

Adebajo puts a modern spin on traditional Nigerian food. Her honey bean porridge is plant-based, with coconut instead of meat or fish, and her jollof rice is made with seven spices, including cameroon, cayenne, ginger, thyme and curry.

“It’s the way you layer them into the dish that makes them stand out,” she says. “It’s aromatic — sweet, spicy and smoky all at the same time.”

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 9: Simileoluwa Adebajo, chef-owner of Èkó Kitchen, San Francisco’s first Nigerian restaurant, serves up a dish of chicken suya, Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Nigerian food is not often in the spotlight, so when a recent TikTok challenge about fufu and egusi soup went viral and very negative, it caught Adebajo’s attention. Egusi soup is a nutty soup thickened with roasted and ground seeds of squash, melon or gourd. It usually has leafy greens — Adebajo puts spinach in hers — and is eaten with pounded yam.

“Some people were trying it and saying, ‘It’s so nasty’ and ‘This is homeless food,'” Adebajo says. “But this dish is such a big part of West African culture. It is nutritious and has high protein content. It’s not pretty, and it’s not familiar, but when I serve it I want to help people understand that just because something is not pretty doesn’t mean it’s not delicious.”

Adebajo started Èkó Kitchen by offering a delivery and catering menu of egusi soup, peppered chicken, puff puff and other authentic dishes out of that Mission District commissary kitchen. Her party-vibe dinners — with bar bites like suya spice-marinated beef skewers and Afrobeats playlists — grew such a fan base that she moved to a larger shared restaurant space in 2019.

But when the pandemic hit and dine-in eateries shuttered, Adebajo was forced to move back to the commissary kitchen. One week later, that massive fire, which took out six structures including the prep spots for at least five other food businesses, destroyed Èkó Kitchen.

Determined to rebuild, Adebajo launched a GoFundMe that caught Santos’ eye. Soon after, she accepted his offer to share the kitchen of his Mexican restaurant in the mornings. This enabled Adebajo to not only keep the eatery going, but to prepare nearly 15,000 meals for first responders and others in need as part of SF New Deal, the initiative that helped restaurants stay afloat by providing free meals for the city’s most vulnerable. Today, she is the youngest board member of the nonprofit.

In September 2020, she told Bon Appetit that she was simply doing what Nigerians have always done when they see their community in need. But Adebajo’s humanitarian work — including a fundraiser that sent food, masks and hand sanitizer to slums in Lagos — came at a time when she was suffering her own crippling losses.

These days, Adebajo is taking on more catering and private chef work, and developing her other businesses. Whipped Ori is an essential oil-infused skincare line made from shea butter imported from Nigeria and whipped to a light consistency. Her latest business, Apere, is a lifestyle brand that sells hand-woven bags, baskets and other home goods made by artisans in Lagos.

She would love for Èkó Kitchen to have its own space one day, but taking on a lease and the other associated costs of a restaurant are less than ideal right now.

“I’m still passionate about food,” she says. “I just want to do it in a way that makes sense for my life.”

Èkó Kitchen: Chef Simi currently offers a small menu of takeout from 4 to 8 pm Saturdays at Merkado (130 Townsend St., SF) for online orders placed earlier in the week. For pick up times, visit www.ekokitchensf.online.

Cooking classes: Learn how to make egusi soup, jollof rice and other Nigerian dishes through Chef Simi’s virtual cooking classes. Prices start at $50 (or $100 with delivered ingredients). Email ekokitchensf@gmail.com for more information.

Pop up dinner: “Homecoming: A Celebration of All People of African Descent” takes place from 5 to 10 pm Feb. 18 at Merkado, 130 Townsend St., SF The a la carte menu will include Èkó Combo Jollof Rice with grilled peppered chicken and sweet fried plantains , and an Asun Plate with smoked, peppered goat meat with fried plantains and sweet potatoes. www.ekokitchensf.online

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The chef who brought shish kebab to America escaped from a Turkish prison first. Somehow, George Mardikian channeled the pain and hunger from his survival of genocide: He went from a dishwasher to a world-famous San Francisco restaurant owner who won the Presidential Medal of Freedom and dedicated his life to feeding people.

All of this he did with a smile.

Omar Khayyam’s — an Armenian restaurant with elegant Middle Eastern decor named after an epicurean Persian poet — was destination dining for San Franciscans for more than 40 years at its underground location near the corner of Powell and O’Farrell streets. Celebrities and professionals paid upscale prices while armed service members and refugees ate for free.

Its shish kebab and bulgur pilaf were the main draw for a largely white clientele unfamiliar with such food. But the restaurant drew its life force from, as poet William Saroyan called him, “the big man with the bright face coming over to your table.”

Mardikian was among America’s first celebrity chefs and was as close to a Guy Fieri figure as San Francisco had — in terms of fame, relentless optimism and generosity. Fine-dining guides and Chronicle columnist Herb Caen celebrated him, NBC gave him his own radio show in the 1940s, and he wrote an autobiography and cookbook.

When Omar Khayyam’s went up in flames in 1980, it marked the beginning of the end for Armenian restaurants in San Francisco. Today, no specifically Armenian restaurant exists in the Bay Area.

Mardikian, who died in 1977 at 73 years old, nevertheless inspired many in the food business. One of them was Levon Der Bedrossian, an Armenian who emigrated from Lebanon and opened his first Le Méditeranée in 1979 in San Francisco — it is still serving Middle Eastern and Mediterranean food there and in Berkeley.

Der Bedrossian’s first memory of Mardikian was as a 12-year-old in Beirut, where he saw Mardikian, in his customary all-white outfit, speak at an Armenian college while traveling to bring Middle Eastern refugees to the U.S.

A 1952 photo of the intersection of Powell and O’Farrell streets in San Francisco, where Omar Khayyam’s stood from 1938 to 1980. 

OpenSFHistory / wnp25.1235

“I don’t remember any words, but it is a subliminal image,” Der Bedrossian, who is 74 now, told SFGATE. “We all are survivors of the massacre. I consider my parents and grandparents as refugees. Our collective experience has been one of there wasn’t a big role model for us. We were surviving.

“Here is this man as an Armenian who is helping. It was a good role model that made me proud.”

Mardikian’s enthusiastic love for America began before he got here. He was the child of a prosperous, landowning family in present-day Istanbul when his father and other

family members were rounded up and slain by the Ottoman Turkish government in 1915. An estimated 1.5 million Armenians were killed in the resulting genocide, with many more displaced.

Mardikian sought to fight back as a 15-year-old guerrilla fighter. After Armenia’s independence was briefly recognized in 1918, he organized Boy Scout troops before war broke out against invading Russia. Lt. Mardikian was captured by Turkish forces and imprisoned for about two years, forced to chop ice on a frozen river while fighting starvation.

It may have ended that way if not for some intervention from an American friend Mardikian had made. Capt. Eddie Fox, who was directing Near East Relief, urged Mardikian’s captors to release him on account of his being an American.

The Turks apparently bought the lie. Mardikian boarded a ship for Ellis Island and took a train to San Francisco to join his brother and sister in 1922.

Mardikian often talked of his Ellis Island stopover as a foundational moment in his life, including on Edward R. Murrow’s “This I Believe” radio show in the 1950s. “My feelings when I first saw the Statue of Liberty cannot be described,” he said.

When George Mardikian cooked in his kitchen, he always wore white with a towering hat. (Photo: San Francisco Chronicle)

When Ellis Island opened as a national historic site in 1976, Mardikian was one of six U.S. immigrants honored.

In San Francisco, almost penniless and living with his siblings, Mardikian was hired as a dishwasher at Coffee Dan’s on O’Farrell and Powell.

Mardikian wrote in his cookbook, “Dinner at Omar Khayyam’s,” of his transformative first days in San Francisco, witnessing hundreds of happy beachgoers and walking past people who smiled at him when all he had known was hostility. He vowed to let go of his own anger right there.

“Since then, my ability to smile has been of the greatest help,” Mardikian wrote. “I could smile when I couldn’t talk English, and while I was learning to cook. I think my ability to smile, even when I was losing money, gained me the many friends who have made the restaurants a success.”

Mardikian spent several years working his way up to floor manager at Coffee Dan’s while working hard to eliminate his accent because “I was young and proud and I didn’t want anyone laughing at me,” as he said in a 1962 interview with the Chronicle.

He had been promoted to cook when he received his citizenship in 1928, and he vowed to make food his life’s work.

Mardikian left town and spent two years on an international food odyssey — learning recipes and techniques on cruise liners, working for a master chef in Egypt and reading manuscripts at an Armenian monastery in Venice, Italy.

“It was through these musty, old manuscripts that I came to realize that Armenian cuisine goes back 3,900 years,” he wrote.

After seeing the world, Mardikian settled down in Fresno. Which made sense as a proving ground for Armenian cooking, given it had one of the largest Armenian populations in the U.S. He opened his first Omar Khayyam’s there as a lunch counter in 1930, with his new wife, Nazenig, working as greeter and cashier.

What vaulted an immigrant cook in Fresno to international fame? Says one expert, it was a breakout magazine feature produced by two traveling food writers-slash-secret lovers.

John Birdsall, himself a food author, points to a September 1934 Sunset Magazine article about Mardikian’s food, produced by Genevieve Callahan and Lou Richardson. It included recipes for his shish kebab and brining fresh grape leaves for dolma.

“Gen and Lou discovered these new and exciting foods like tacos, pozole and guacamole and introduced them to Sunset’s white, upper-middle-class readership,” Birdsall told SFGATE, adding that they “were the first to really champion and write about George Mardikian.”

The timing was perfect — America was falling in love with outdoor barbecues and fresh ingredients, and Mardikian was more than happy to share his novel-yet-accessible menu. He became a regular, smiling presence in Sunset, with sketches of him cooking alongside recipes for his Omar Khayyam’s specials, such as chicken tchakhokbelli (braised chicken in tomato juice, sherry and paprika) and rice pilaf.

This page from a 1944 edition of Sunset Magazine’s “Sunset Kitchen Cabinet” feature shows cartoons of George Mardikian cooking some of his signature dishes. The page includes his recipe for chicken tchakhokbelli. 

Screenshot courtesy of John Birdsall

With Omar’s a national hit, Mardikian returned to Coffee Dan’s in San Francisco and promoted himself from dishwasher to owner — according to a Life Magazine article, the sale took 15 minutes.

Omar Khayyam’s opened in 1938 in San Francisco to great acclaim from the Chronicle’s Caen: “Bo-kays to George Mardikian, the Armenian chef whose culinary sleight-of-hand is drawing the celebrities to Omar Khayyam’s,” he wrote that year.

As Caen intimated, Mardikian was as brilliant a marketer as he was a chef. He found a way to present his culture, best known to white Americans as working class and downtrodden, in a storybook dining setting (“Omar Khayyam” was a feature film in 1957). People dressed up and eagerly descended the stairs to a low-lit, walnut-paneled space with murals on the walls depicting scenes from the Rubaiyat poems attributed to the real-life Khayyam, who died in 1131.

“You felt your emotions get stirred up there,” said Der Bedrossian, who visited Omar Khayyam’s soon after emigrating to San Francisco in 1968.

Birdsall, whose San Francisco roots date to his great-grandparents, said he first heard of the restaurant from seeing a menu that his grandmother had saved: “She told me what a special restaurant that was and what a special occasion it was to go eat there. It had a kind of glamour.”

As the décor blended cultural influences, so did the food. Many who first walked in would have never tried shish kebab and pilaf, but Mardikian’s menu included baked ham and roast turkey for the uninitiated.

Shish kebab’s origins span the Middle East and Caucasus region, and they aren’t specifically Armenian. But khorovadz, as Mardikian referred to it in Armenian in his cookbook, “is to Armenians what corned beef and cabbage is to the Irish.” 

Mardikian used Armenian lore to broaden his menu’s appeal. Such as his arkayagan venison soup, which he said dated 3,900 years to when an Armenian king would serve it as a victory stew to his court. And he was a passionate advocate for the health benefits of yogurt, which Armenians played the leading role in bringing to Americans.

To find the starter to make your own yogurt at home, Mardikian wrote, “just open any telephone book and find a name ending with ‘ian.’” (Most Armenians, including this writer, have such a name.)

Describing food as “exotic” has rightfully fallen out of favor in recent years. But the word was often used to describe Omar’s as it gained popularity, even as critics praised the food for its quality regardless of origin.

Katherine Kerry called Mardikian “undoubtedy America’s best known and best loved restaurateur” in her 1953 restaurant guide, “Look What’s Cooking.” She described the fare as “genuine Armenian delicacies, cooked up to American tastes, rather than down to American conceptions.”

Mardikian didn’t just appeal to tastes — he made them, too. When he released the Omar’s Delight cocktail to help his friend sell more Southern Comfort, the restaurant accounted for more sales of the liquor than the rest of San Francisco combined, according to a 1951 Chronicle story. 

Mardikian quickly went from attracting celebrities to becoming one himself, hosting a weekly radio show for NBC where he shared recipes and received hundreds of letters per episode. He put his fame to philanthropic use often. During World War II, dignitaries such as first lady Eleanor Roosevelt often dropped by with service members, whom he personally served for free. He served 210 wounded soldiers from Bay Area hospitals on Thanksgiving 1943 alone.

That paled in contrast to the amount of feeding he did during the signing of the United Nations charter in San Francisco in 1945. For nine weeks, 282 delegates from 50 nations, plus their staff, ate food he catered for free in the basement of the Opera House. According to the Life article, that was almost 2,000 meals in three hours, five times a week, with 500 members of the American Women’s Voluntary Services helping.

According to the Life article, Mardikian told a Turkish delegation member eating his food, “A few years ago my greatest joy would have been to put poison in your eggplant just because you are a Turk. But now that I am an American I feel no animosity.”

Mardikian took his culinary skills abroad as a food consultant for the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1954. His efforts to better feed Army troops in Korea were enough to earn him America’s highest civilian award, the Medal of Freedom from President Harry Truman in 1951. He consulted for subsequent presidents up through Richard Nixon.

The Chronicle’s obituary for Mardikian said, “He liked to tell army mess sergeants that they were competing with every soldier’s mother and that they had better use their wits to convert a slice of Spam into something more appetizing and attractive.”

So concerned was Mardikian with conserving food during World War II, he issued 10% refunds to diners in war stamps if they would simply clean their plates.

When Mardikian made humanitarian visits, he didn’t just bring back souvenirs. He sponsored and employed Armenian refugees. One such case was Yousef Injian, who came to San Francisco with his family after he cooked for Mardikian at the Armenian monastery in Jerusalem. Mardikian sponsored and hosted at his restaurant another 13 Armenians who survived a Nazi forced labor camp.

Mardikian split time living at his home in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights and his 300-acre ranch in St. Helena until he died at age 73 in October 1977 of a heart attack. Omar Khayyam’s lived on for three more years, when a fire broke out inside the restaurant, badly damaging the famed interior and forcing it to close.

The restaurant maintained its magic even after Mardikian had gone. Roseanna Sarkissian recalls dining at Omar Khayyam’s on New Year’s Eve of 1978, less than three months after his death. She was 18 and had just moved to San Francisco from Iran months earlier. She had never heard of the restaurant and knew only one person in her group that night, a family friend.

The paintings on the wall and elegant decor struck her, as did the pilaf — even after growing up in an Armenian household, it was different from what she’d eaten, and she loved it.

“It was overwhelming for me,” she told SFGATE. “That’s when I realized there are Armenian restaurants and how well known this was around the world. I had no idea.”

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During the 2018 holiday season, Chef Anthony Strong longed for a weekend getaway to Lake Tahoe but couldn’t justify the time – his restaurant in Mission District, Prairie, was just 2 months old at the time. “So I decided to build a winter ski hut out of gingerbread instead,” says Strong, 35.

Strong fell into the gingerbread house, which was partly inspired by his background in construction, between jobs, and it has since become an annual tradition. In the past two years, he’s moved from traditionally decorated gingerbread shapes to the slimmer style of mid-century modern architecture, and he’s sharing his enthusiasm in a series of gingerbread ski lodge workshops in Prairie this month.

In 2018, Strong drew on the retro-futurism of the space colonies by Bay Area illustrator Rick Guidice, which were shiny, optimistic visions of cosmic suburbs commissioned by the NASA Art Program in 1975. Strong’s original ski cabin had an unmistakable butterfly roof, a carport, surrounded by a “breeze block” wall made of peppermint-colored lifesavers and large panes of caramelized sugar glass – after all, an intimate connection with the outside world is a guiding principle of the mid-century modern design movement.

The house had an amber glow, as if there was a crackling fireplace inside, and was warm and inviting in a winter wonderland of finely ground coconut snow, candy-coated chocolate stones, and a forest of cut evergreen gingerbread trees.

In addition to its modern silhouette, the hut has also moved away from the traditional deluge of sweets and icing flourishes that go back to the beginnings of gingerbread making in Germany in the 16th century.

“Gaudy is not an option,” says the chef, who recently upgraded the foot-long, 9-inch-high cabin with more sophistication than last year’s model – entire walls are now made of sugar glass, and the snowy evergreens are brilliantly represented by sprigs of rosemary, an ingenuity of Strong’s girlfriend Katherine Altonaga, 31. “Doing something beautiful is first and foremost.”

When Strong hosts his gingerbread ski lodge workshops in Prairie this month, there are bottomless dragees, gummy candies, and candy canes for those prone to unbridled jewelry. The different parts of the structure are pre-baked and pre-cut for the students; Strong achieves crisp lines by using an Exacto knife on sugar slices and homemade gingerbread that are still warm.

Chef Anthony Strong shows off his modern mid-century Tahoe vacation lodge in San Francisco, California on Wednesday, November 20, 2019.Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle

While some homemade gingerbread houses are known to sag or slim over time, the chef uses an overly sticky, heavily overworked batter that, despite its rich golden color and seductive aroma of molasses, ginger, and cinnamon, he calls “bombproof”. Likewise the “cement-strong” glaze, which is filled into piping bags for the workshops. The glue made from finely sifted powdered sugar and egg white is used to glue the gingerbread seams together.

“The house is probably not meant to be eaten,” says Strong. “At least not without a liter of milk on the side.”

The Noe Valley resident built his first gingerbread house in 2016 after leaving his veteran post as head chef at Delfina Restaurant Group. For the first time in 11 years, Strong was free over the holidays. The result of all that free time was a two story suburban style home, heavy on the decorative frosting swirls and surrounded by a picket fence.

“I had so much fun doing it that I couldn’t help it. I preserved it with hairspray and then put it in my closet, ”says the Minnesota native, who grew up helping his father build furniture, porches, and additions to houses. Strong was even the general contractor for Prairie, overseeing the skimpy design and construction, which features indigo-colored plywood walls instead of expensive tile or wallpaper, as well as some of Rick Guidice’s cosmic prints. Modern gingerbread houses seemed like a natural intersection between Strong’s culinary know-how and design talent.

Chef Anthony Strong and Katherine Altonaga work on the carport of their modern mid-century Tahoe vacation lodge in San Francisco, California on Wednesday, November 20, 2019.Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle

In 2017, he tried a 2 foot tall, designed by Dr. Seuss-inspired fun house with a cantilevered colonnade that seemed to defy gravity. In its current mid-century modern phase, Strong has considered recreating the historic Kentucky Fried Chicken building in Palm Springs with its towering, wing-like roof, yet another retro-futuristic form of the era. Maybe next year.

The perfecting of the modern ski lodge from the middle of the century was a suitable holiday activity for the busy restaurateur and snow-hungry Midwesterner, which he is now doing with Altonaga. You’d think that building a gingerbread miniature wouldn’t have the restorative benefits that an actual retreat in a true Lake Tahoe cabin could offer, but Strong would contradict that.

“I’m really crazy about gingerbread,” he says. “I go down a rabbit hole and suddenly two days have passed.”

Leilani Marie Labong is a San Francisco-based freelance writer. Email: food@sfchronicle.com

Build your own gingerbread ski lodge workshops with Chef Anthony Strong. 10:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. December 7, 14, and 21 at Prairie, 3431 19th St., San Francisco. 415-483-1112 or http://prairiesf.com/about/. Reservations required. $ 150 for a house, two people.

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After a year of packaging Bolognese and pork chops wrapping, Nopa joined the parklet scene in early March, allowing his longtime fans to finally eat in restaurants, if only outdoors, since the pandemic began. Since last week there are also 10 indoor tables. Exciting, but still not the same jam-packed, nightly party Nopa has basically been since Jeff Hanak, Laurence Jossel, and his then-fiancée Allyson Woodman opened the restaurant 15 years ago.

It was a different world then. In 2006, on the corner of Divisadero and Hayes Streets, there was nothing but a coin-operated laundromat with long doors, which is why they could afford it. The rent for the two-story, 4,000-square-foot room was $ 7,000 per month. Laurence trolls auctions and pays pennies for pots and pans. They asked their friend Brian Barneclo to paint a wall-length mural inside honoring the street. They called it Nopa (as in North of the Panhandle), and it became arguably the first full-service late-night neighborhood eatery – in their neighborhood – then known only as Western Addition, where culinary options were limited to Popeyes, pizza and a popular grill counter. Yet gentrification was quietly going on.

Laurence, Jeff, and Allyson had a common goal: to feed their people until 1am, heretical at the time for sleepy San Francisco. “The tipsters and speakers,” said Jossel, referring to all the bartenders and waiters who came in at the extra-long bar after their shift for elderflower and wood-grilled burgers. A busy brunch soon followed. (Just like Nopa’s new neighbors: Bi-Rite. Boutiques. Josey Baker was selling $ 8 toast (now).) At peak times, the kitchen was cooking for about 4,000 customers a week.

Fast forward to 2021 and Nopa – the restaurant and neighborhood that essentially renamed it (after years brokers tried and failed) – had what we all had: a difficult year. And how many COVID relationships (including Bill and Melinda): a breakup. The once close trio has broken up, 51-year-old Jossel remains standing. Somehow he is not exhausted, but full of energy, supported in Nopa’s next chapter by his new partner Holly Rhodes, who acts as a delivery driver. He’s also excited to see the new bestseller on his menu: Fried Chicken ($ 23).

I spoke to Laurence about the split, Nopa’s legacy and the future of his restaurant. The following conversation has been edited and condensed for the sake of clarity. (Disclosure: Rachel is a longtime Nopa regular and friends with Laurence, Allyson, and Holly; their children all go to the same school.)

Nopa was largely limited to takeout before Laurence Jossel managed to secure a parklet for the restaurant in March.

Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle

Q: So what happened? Breakups are so hard. And I knew that you already had one personally. … It’s like a breakup over a breakup.

A: Yes, Allyson and I got divorced five years ago and the reality was, it was really hard to work together during that time. When couples split up, they can usually take their time. They can say, “I’ll talk to you in six months.” But we still had to see each other every day, sit across from each other at meetings and talk about paintwork or whatever and pretend everything was fine. It has taken an emotional toll. Back then I didn’t want to be there anymore, but how could I just walk away? We both had every right to be there. So we did it. We made it.

Q: Until the pandemic. The big reset.

A: It was scary the day after the shutdown. Jeff and Ally were both, we don’t want liability. Let’s just close it. I said: we can’t. We have too many people in this restaurant who don’t get government support. We have to show the neighborhood that smoke is coming from the chimney. They said, “We’re out.” The pandemic has made everyone look at their lives and say, “Is this really what I want to do?” And it wasn’t for Jeff and Ally. They have their other restaurants, like Liho and Nopalito. It was months of negotiations. At one point I thought you know what, well, just take it. Buy me out. I am conflict avoidance. I just start over. And Holly kept saying, “You will regret it. It’s no nopa without you. ”(The Chronicle reached out to Jeff with no response. Since the story went online, Jeff has said he had not received the Chronicle’s request for comment. Allyson declined to comment, adding for wishing Laurence all the best for Nopa’s future.)

Q: Now you are everything. How does it feel?

A: Well it was heartbreaking. Jeff and I were brothers. He gave my son his middle name – Louie. Long story. Holly and I lived on her 401k, we put our mortgage on hold. Our children raised themselves this year. But it feels great to be the sole owner of Nopa. I’ve never been the sole owner of anything. I am the boss. It remains to be seen whether I can be an entrepreneur. I have 10 jobs now. I clean bathrooms. But after 37 years of working in restaurants in San Francisco, this is my first time not under any obligation.

Q: And you have had a parklet since last month. Why did it take you so long to build one?

A: We had to move a bus stop! Holly heard the head of the SFMTA (Michael Krasny’s radio show) one morning and called: She said, hey, the Hayes-21 is no longer running. We clean up after the homeless, our business suffers. Help us. We want to build a parklet. I tracked down the head of Clear Channel Outdoor (an advertising company that runs billboards and other outdoor signs. It turns out they own the bus stops and we had to move one. I cooked the guy a chicken. Instead of their advertising, we asked after to rent it. We call it the Glass Canvas. There will be a different local artist every month. Holly is the curator. I also like that we have this neon-lit steel structure in front of our parklet. These parklets are not safe, man. If one Our car hits, it hits steel, not our guests.

Q: Thank you for thinking of us. Are people so happy to be eating at Nopa’s again?

A: It’s amazing how emotional everyone was. On Instagram, outside. They say: “We met here.” Or “We got engaged here.” Or “I ate here the day before my baby was born. … The day I found out my mother had died. ”They tell me,“ I can’t wait to go to the bar. ”They say,“ We ​​did it. We survived that together. ”To be honest, we did. It’s not just a pork chop for people.

Q: It’s not just a pork chop for you, either, is it?

A: Sometimes I think I could have been braver, started something new. But I did something at the beginning of COVID. Holly went home, everyone was gone. I was just turning off the light in the dining room and just stood there and swore to the building that I wouldn’t let it go. I said i love you I owe you. I owe this building. I owe it to the legacy of all these cooks and waiters, bus drivers, bartenders and guests that it goes on. I owe it to the neighborhood to show – that after all that is lost – we are still alive. Nopa is sitting in exactly the right place on the planet to make people happy.

Nopa added a fried chicken dish ($ 23) to its menu during the pandemic. It is the restaurant’s second most popular product after the burger.

Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle

Q: You know what else makes people happy: your new roast chicken.

A: Holly and I were actually two days away from signing a small window lease in Potrero for nothing but fried chicken before COVID hit. I had tinkered with a table deep fryer at home. A lot of fried chickens are all about the crust, the outside. But I think the taste comes from the chicken itself; I focused on the taste from within. From slaughter to soaking buttermilk. It’s a fried chicken philosophy. I tried different spices and in the end I got a Ras el Hanout with 21 different spices including cardamom, nutmeg, ginger. It is wet-salted for three hours, double-dredged. I thought it was just going to be COVID comfort food, but it’s now Nopa’s # 2 best seller.

Q: # 1 is the burger? How much is it right now?

A: $ 24 with fries. We panicked when we first put a burger on the menu in 2006 – for $ 12. We thought: who pays $ 12 for a burger ?! Like bougie! But we said, look, we grind our meat every morning, and it’s good meat, shoulder; We bake our own rolls, we pickle our own onions, we whip our own aioli, we cut our own french fries by hand, we grill them over wood – someone has to stack the wood. There is so much work behind it. Twenty percent of the people who come through the door get burgers. In 2019 we sold 38,000 burgers. That’s a lot of burgers. And our burger is a lot of work. Maybe we should call it this: “A lot of F – working with cheese”.

Q: Meat seems to be falling out of favor quickly lately. Worried about your burger?

A: No. It doesn’t keep me up at night. Our burger will be good. But the fried chicken wins.

UPDATE: This story has been updated to reflect what Jeff Hanak said.

Rachel Levin is co-author of Eat Something and Steamed: A Catharsis Cookbook for Getting Dinner and Your Feelings on the Table, released by Running Press this month.

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Brandon Jew is the executive chef and owner of the Michelin-starred Mister Jiu’s restaurant, which sits on hallowed ground in San Francisco’s Chinatown. The same space was once occupied by Hang Far Low, which Jew points out was “the city’s grandest restaurant for decades” after it opened its doors in the 1850s. More recently, it was the opulent Four Seas, whose guests were Chinese dignitaries, elected officials and A-list celebrities like Vince Vaughn. 

In his new cookbook, “Mister Jiu’s in Chinatown,” Jew takes readers on a journey that transcends the plate. In addition to teaching us his master technique and the recipes from his award-winning kitchen, Jew also shares the rich history and stories of the birthplace of Chinese American cuisine. When he reflects on how Chinatown succeeded, the answer is the food. 

“It’s through the food,” Jew told me during our recent “Salon Talks” interview. “That bridged a lot of the racism, the stereotypes of the Chinese community, by having the most delicious food in the city here in Chinatown, and people started to break down a lot of those walls.”

RELATED: Purchase a copy of “Mister Jiu’s in Chinatown” and support local book stores

Jew’s book, which pays homage to Chinatown’s past, present and future, offers a behind-the-scenes look at a neighborhood that changed how America eats. The immigrants who landed in Chinatown brought with them recipes that dated back generations, and they also created something uniquely American. 

“I think there’s been a lot of, maybe, secrecy behind some of Chinese cooking,” Jew said. “And I’m hoping that the more people actually learn about Chinese cuisine, the more people will appreciate our culture and our food.”

When Jew recently appeared on “Salon Talks,” we talked about former President Richard Nixon’s love of Peking duck, how to navigate cooking with a wok at home and why soup is always part of a proper Chinese meal. To learn more, read or watch our conversation below.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Tell me about how you feel right now in this moment amid the release of “Mister Jiu’s in Chinatown.”

There’s definitely a mix of emotions. I’m really proud of the book, how it’s come out. And the process is three years of having a big project on the side of running the restaurant. I can kind of recall the beginning of the book, not feeling quite ready to write the book. And actually leaning more on the idea that this is also a book about Chinatown and present-day Chinatown. As much as the inspirations have guided me along the beginning of the opening of Mister Jiu’s to the end of 2019, which happened to be really the beginning of the pandemic, in a way. So a lot of the photos, a lot of even just the size of the team that I had, it all kind of reminds me of what we’re trying to work back to. 

But also, I guess some of the other emotions are nervousness. I think we try to really have a good mix of what we do here. As a restaurant, I think we try to make food that is not so easy to make at home. And that you’re going to be tasting flavors and experiencing things that you just can’t whip up yourself in one night, really. But we want the book to be practical, too. So making sure that we were including recipes that were achievable for someone to do on any given night, I think that was important.

But I also have some aspirational recipes — if you have a couple of days and you want to actually see how our duck [is made], how long it does take to produce and why those steps are important, then that’s also there. Because we wanted to make it also a book that was not just a very simple, kind of Chinese American [cookbook], but we want it to be really true to some of the technique that is a little more complicated. 

Your restaurant, Mister Jiu’s, sits on what I would call hallowed ground. There’s decades of history there. The Four Seas was there for over 50 years, then you moved in. Can you tell us a little bit about the significance of that space and creating your restaurant in that space?

It feels like a real honor to be able to continue the legacies of restaurants that have been here before me. [Editor’s Note: Hang Far Low, the establishment before Four Seas, dated back to the 19th century.] I think that is something that does sit on my shoulders in a way that it makes me want to do them justice, make them proud of what we’re doing here. And I think I take a lot of inspiration from the kind of restaurants they were in their prime, too. I’d say like they were both cutting edge restaurants that were representing, I think, fine dining in Chinese cuisine. And we’re really great hosts for celebrations, traditional celebrations in Chinese culture. We’re in a space right now that was a banquet room that used to host weddings of 300 people. Some of the old postcards that I have, there’s like 12 massive lazy Susan tables in this entire space. It looked like a lot of fun. So having some of that energy of how it was, you kind of want to see that again here as an operator. So yes, I think the space has been very, very inspiring to me.

Your restaurant is Mister Jiu’s, which is spelled differently than your last name. But that might not even be your last name, as it turns out. 

Yes, we had to write a little bit about that in the book. Because I think it’s not easy to understand why my last name is spelled J-E-W, while the restaurant’s spelled J-I-U. And then, like you said, neither of them are really my last name. And this all comes into play when talking about some of the loss in translation. We use that theme a little bit.

My last name was changed when my grandparents came to America. They got processed in Angel Island. And this happened to a lot of other immigrants as well, not just Chinese.

I had interviewed an architect at one point. He was Italian, his last name was Pesce, and it just got written as “Fish.” And so his last name was Fish. Changes were made based on probably the process and what would be easier for [immigration workers] to write. So I’m assuming, because of the amount of processing that was happening, my grandpa said his name was Jiu, and they wrote “J-E-W.”

My grandpa didn’t want to change the name after that. I don’t know if it was a fear of getting kicked out of America. I talked about my grandpa, Yeh Yeh, in the book. He was a man of few words. And so he didn’t really want to cause any disruption to his life or anyone else’s. He was fine with that kind of thing. 

But I always questioned it. I always wondered why, how we got this name. And part of me, and I think I’m really the only one maybe that feels like this in my family, I really wanted to change it. I wanted to change it back to what I thought it should be. It should have been. And even before the restaurant opened, I was actually in pursuit of that. I think I understood that it was kind of upsetting my parents. So changing the name to J-I-U when the restaurant open was a way for me to say, in some words, that my last name is not really my last name. And I wanted to have something that was phonetically, actually, or literally spelled more correct.

Before you opened Mister Jiu’s, you were cooking Italian food and Mediterranean food. But you said you didn’t realize that you needed to open your restaurant until your grandmother was diagnosed with cancer. Can you tell me about how that connected the dots for you on your journey to becoming a chef?

Yes, that really impacted me at the time of my career. I was really deep in understanding Italian cuisine. Anytime you’re cooking something, I feel like you’re paying homage to a time and a place. [I was] really learning a lot about Italian customs with how their food is incorporated into their celebrations, or certain regions of Italy, how they made these kind of pairings, and flavor, from what really they had around them. I think I started to look at my own family and realize that I felt like I had a duty to really learn and understand my family’s food. And I think that came to a headway when my grandma was passing away, because I realized that I didn’t take enough of the opportunities to catalog as much as I could.

Mister Jiu’s, in a lot of ways, is me working my way back to the memories that I have of food with her. And with my family. And also traveling to China and living in Shanghai, a lot of what I’m searching back to is some of these taste memories,  trying to find how to get that flavor back that’s almost like something that is on your palate that you can recall, but getting back there has taken some time to understand how to get there. 

And so the book, there’s a lot of what I’ve come to learn. Also, I’ve been just fascinated with Chinese technique. And I think for a lot of home cooks, I want to have people understand it’s not difficult, but it does take time to learn. And I think the approach to ingredients is very similar to what I had grown to learn about California cuisine, which is that curating your ingredients is a big part of your final result. Understanding the products as well as you can, cooking them, asking questions about them and experimenting. There are some pairings that I feel stronger about sometimes . . . I’m just thinking of the Mandarin salad with chrysanthemum — the chrysanthemum is such, to me, an amazing aroma and texture. And I really love how it pairs with citrus particularly. 

But that should not prevent people from making that recipe if you can’t get chrysanthemum. You can find things like chervil, you can even use watercress — that’s going to be a little spicier — but it’s about getting the best products you can and then understanding some of the technique and some of the flavors behind everything, and then just find where those things fit. And so I’ve enjoyed trying to figure out, even for myself, how do I get artichokes or avocados into Chinese cuisine and where can they fit in? I don’t have an answer for you quite yet. But we’ve used avocado in a cucumber salad before . . . I really loved the richness that brought. 

And we use artichokes for its bitterness. The same way that I think a Chinese chef would use bitterness to initiate some of the beginning of the meal to get you salivating. And also to maybe combat some sweetness that might be in a dish, and balance it back to being savory. I’m hoping that this book becomes inspiring for people to understand some of the method, but also to experiment themselves, and to really just have fun in the kitchen. I mean, that’s what got me into cooking in the first place. Cooking should always be enjoyable. And at the end of the day, it’s your meal. So making it the best you can, you’re going to be rewarded for that, anyways. And that’s why, I mean — I’ve been big-boned my whole life, so I’ve loved eating. And I hope this inspires another generation of chefs to cook Chinese and to learn Chinese techniques. 

Also, I think the mission of this book is to help promote Chinese American authors, too. There haven’t been a lot of chefs that have gotten the opportunity to write books or have taken on putting the recipes out there. I think there’s been a lot of, maybe, secrecy behind some of Chinese cooking. And I’m hoping that the more people actually learn about Chinese cuisine, the more people will appreciate our culture and our food.

When you parallel how Chinatown was successful, I mean, it’s through the food. That bridged a lot of the racism, the stereotypes of the Chinese community, by having the most delicious food in the city here in Chinatown, and people started to break down a lot of those walls. So this is also about some of the history of Chinatown, the struggle of Chinatown, but also the success of this neighborhood, as far as immigrant community-living in America, still able to have a lot of their customs and their culture, but also integrate American culture into the neighborhood as well and be successful here in America.

Speaking of Chinese American chefs, you talked about how your parents were once very much against you taking a career path as a chef. Can you speak a little bit about that? That may be surprising to some since you’re so successful now. 

I went to college for biology. The sciences have always been really interesting to me. I think in some other way, I still get to really learn about what I’ve loved even as a kid, which is plants and animals and learning about life systems and all those kind of things. But yes, my parents, I think they thought I was maybe going pre-med or just maybe even a more academic kind of life way. I think that was partly because I was the first in my family to leave to go to college. And my parents, they didn’t go to college. So having the conversation with them that I was really wanting to pursue cooking and I love cooking, I think their hope was that it might be like a lot of things that I said I enjoyed doing and that it might just pass. 

Some of the conversations I had with my grandparents, they really didn’t understand why I would want to cook. And I think the industry now is different, I think you can maybe explain what I’m trying to aspire to, being able to showcase Chinese cuisine and to be able to have my own restaurant. And they just didn’t see that. Some of the growth of our industry has given a lot of hope for younger people to understand that they can have a lot of aspiration in this industry to continue cooking, if they really enjoy it.

That’s also something that I’m hoping the book can also promote: giving aspiration to a younger generation that Chinese cooking is multi-faceted. 

In your section about how you cook, you instruct people at home to follow the philosophy of their grandmother, which is cook by principles and not by rules. What does that mean?

My grandma, there was never a recipe out where she was following. She cooked by a lot of memory, she cooked by a lot of feel, and she tasted along the way. And I think that’s what I’m trying to promote is not being so locked into following a recipe that you can’t be flexible enough to learn how to make something be adjusted. Some of the principles that I’ve been referring to is having that flexibility, and also being comfortable without the guidelines of a recipe sometimes, to not let it bum you out. The great thing is, especially when you’re cooking at home, is you’re going to have two, maybe three meals a day. So if something didn’t turn out, you have another opportunity, either that same day to make some dinner, or tomorrow. And it’s about making adjustments, small ones, every day, learning about how to make them better. Our restaurant is better now than it was the first year. I mean, and it should be, because we’re understanding our recipes more and more, we’re making adjustments along the way. 

And these recipes are the recipes of three years into running the restaurant, they’re not the beginning of where we started. So I’m hoping that this is also educational for anyone that is on a path of learning some of these dishes, that we can give our observations and our techniques that have helped us learn about how to make it successful.

And techniques like that include the wok, for example. To be able to cook at the wok at your restaurant, a chef works their way up the ladder. They have to pass through every other stage of the kitchen first. It’s a very unique tool. What is the difference between cooking in a wok in the restaurant kitchen and at home? And do you have any recommendations for getting started with a wok at home?

The first recommendation would be turn your fan on or open a window because it’s going to get a little smoky. Being comfortable cooking with high heat is part of cooking on the wok, and I think that’s the thing why the wok is traditionally, has been the last station that you get to, mainly because you have to be very relaxed cooking with very high heat. And making the right move and having the observations and things are just going so much faster.

I trained on more of a French top with sauté pans. You can move things around on French tops, if it’s hot or if you want it simmering. On a wok, you have one ring in front of you, and you adjust the temperature from high to very high to crazy high.

Yes, you can probably lower it down a little bit, but you’re not simmering on a wok. You’re thinking about how everything goes in. And that’s why it’s very much, I think, an exercise in knowing how to make the right cuts of vegetables. So they go into the wok at certain times. And then understanding the timing, making a sequence of what you’re going to do before, during and after the actual cooking process. 

Having that mapped out is going to make you . . . You’ll have a better outcome, if you think about it before you start cooking.

But then also thinking, OK, I’m going to do this: I’m going to put the oil in, and then add the ginger. And then right after the ginger goes in, I’m going to put in the bok choy. After the bok choy goes in, if it’s big, I might put a little bit of water so it creates some steam in the wok and doesn’t get to char. After that steam goes in, I’m going to season it with the soy sauce, the sesame oil. And then move it around — because of how it’s shaped, all the heat’s on the very center of the bottom, and then kind of juts out to the side. So make sure you’re moving the ingredients in the wok as well. 

You can map when beans go in, and then when you’re going to turn off the heat. Having your utensils ready for you close by. Cooking with the wok, the success is in game planning. That’s my advice for successful wok cooking.

We mentioned duck earlier in the conversation. Peking duck, as we call it here, didn’t really become a popular thing until President Nixon came around. And since we have a very politically minded audience here at Salon, I thought that would be an interesting story to share.

Yes, I think when you understand that a lot of these very complicated dishes have been designed for palace dining, for emperors, and there was, sometimes on purpose, a lot of intricacy. When you’ve had Peking duck, that technique is, to me, a culinary masterpiece. When you think about what those chefs did to make those kind of decisions to put air between the skin to baste it, hang it, dry it and then basically roast it that way. That’s the only way you can get the skin so crispy. There are these lamp-like hallmarks of Chinese cuisine, I feel like Peking duck is one of them. 

That technique is something that you don’t find in any other cuisine. That one is so unique to the outcome of getting crispy skinned duck. I still am fascinated with it. We cook about 100 of them over the course of the week, when we were open and operating. We just take a lot of pride in that dish, knowing that it’s something that is a culinary masterpiece. That technique pays homage to a real deep understanding of the product and the skill of the chefs.

In your book, you also write about soup. Your other grandmother would always cook you soup, and you say “soup is always part of a proper Chinese meal.” Can you elaborate on that?

One memory that I will always have of my grandma . . . she had a pot of soup on the stove. And you got to say hi to her, give her a kiss and then you had to drink soup before doing anything. You were not allowed to do anything until the bowl of soup that was given to you was done. And I think that was her way of . . . it was like medicine. The soup was restorative, it was a way of really deep nourishment. And so having soup be part of a Chinese meal to me is about the mix of textures that you can have over a course of a meal. But more important, I think, is that nourishment. It’s a warming you up from the inside out kind of a feeling. A lot of what goes into those — broth, ginger, mushrooms, chicken bones or pork bones — all those things are meant to be restorative and medicinal. So yes, drink your soup, got to drink your soup.

We’re in the middle of the pandemic, and winter weather, so I think that’s a message for the times for sure. You write about dessert and Chinese meals: As you’ve said, in Chinese meals, the desserts are really just the closers. Why is dessert less of an important aspect?

A lot of the more pastry focus was, I think, as far as dayparts go, it was more of something that you would have during the day. You look at Chinese bakeries, most of those things there are a mix of sweet and savory things. In American dining, you know how important it is for dessert to be part of the meal. And so we have a very talented pastry chef, Melissa, who’s in the book, and these are her recipes. She does in pastry what I do in the savory area. Having a sweet something at the very end is, I think, really part of American dining. And so we wanted to have that experience be where we kind of also get to really play on the mix of Chinese flavors with sometimes American, sometimes French, sometimes Italian, pastry techniques.

I wanted to talk to you, too, about identity and the Chinese American experience. In your book you write, “my first language was Cantonese, I lost it growing up. And with that, I thought I lost a lot of my heritage for forever. But I discovered I’m more Chinese than I ever imagined, in the way I eat and the way I define dessert.” Can you tell me about how your restaurant has helped you to better understand your identity?

Yes, it really comes back to this question that I kept getting, especially in the beginning of the restaurant: Is this restaurant authentic? And authenticity, understanding what that meant for me, authenticity, you have to be authentic. It means that you have to feel like it’s what defines you. And for me, as a chef, for me as a Chinese American, having someone ask me if the food’s going to be authentic, it really kind of put me in front of a mirror, and had me realize, well, what is my authenticity? What can I say is my authentic experience that I’m giving someone? And I think that really played out in my life, and understanding where I fit in between. Was I Chinese enough? Or was I American enough? There’s a lot of pictures of my childhood going from one side to the other, trying to find where to be in the middle. 

I’d say, immigrant American communities, their children are experiencing this. I saw my parents experience it, I saw my grandparents experience it. And I think for myself, I was trying to find what that authentic-ness was, where I fit in between the two cultures. And I think my experience in Shanghai really kind of shaped it because I thought I was going to Shanghai to get this motherland experience. But what I got instead was really understanding how American I was, and how American people viewed me. And I came back feeling a little more at peace with being in the middle.

How that translated into my food was my authenticity is really my training. The things that I’ve come to love over the course of being here in the Bay Area, being exposed to a lot of other cuisine and cultures. My training is Italian training. There’s things that I do still to this day that are very Italian. I still have three or four different amazing extra virgin olive oils that we have in our pantry.

So there’s things that I have incorporated, that I feel like is more authentic to my training, and more authentic to me being at peace with being in between two cultures. That is the authenticity that I bring to Mister Jiu’s.

And I encourage and I promote chefs finding their identity through their food and being comfortable there. Not feeling like you have to do something that is not speaking to yourself. And at the end of the day, I think the diners, they want food that they know that the chef deems is delicious.

It’s the same thing with a writer when they say write about what you know — you’re cooking about what you know, and your family and your experience.

The issue of authenticity is really interesting when we talk about comfort food. And that’s a topic that we’ve talked a lot about here over this past year with the pandemic and the return to comfort food. “Comfort food” means different things to different people — it’s not macaroni and cheese for everybody. For example, my grandmother is an immigrant from Mexico, and I grew up eating a lot of the dishes that she made, and those are the things that I think of as comforting. Do you have any thoughts about comfort food, when it comes to authenticity?

A lot of those comfort foods go back to some of those memories that you have of things that are delicious. And they’re not necessarily fancy, they’re more memorable, I think, like you said, you think of your mom or your grandparents when you have those dishes, they have a deeper meaning. A lot of times, I feel like comfort food, you’re getting comforted by not only the taste that you get, but by the remembrance that you have of having those dishes with those people, or traveling to a certain place and having something there and wanting to relive that experience again by tasting that. 

I think that’s something that’s multifaceted about comfort food, that you’re being comforted by not only the flavor of something, but also another layer of either remembering people or places. And I think it just puts a smile on your face when you have that kind of food; you start to realize that that food has a lot importance, and it has a lot of significance. 

When you put those pieces together, that’s part of what I was searching for in this industry — wanting the food that I cooked to be more than just putting a meal together. I wanted to have it be about my memories and about the people that were influential to me. And to pass on the recipes to another generation of cooks.

I’d be remiss to ask you this because Ashlie Stevens, who’s one of our columnists here in the food section, has a column called Saucy where she takes deep dives into condiments. It was really interesting when I read that “when Americans were pouring on Chinese condiments at the turn of the 19th century, their cookbooks used the terms ‘soy sauce’ and ‘ketchup’ interchangeably.” 

From what I know of ketchup, ketchup was not even tomato-based, really, until Heinz, I think, developed that. It was more almost like a fish sauce, a condiment that was more salty than sweet. So the word ketchup was an evolution, I think, of the use of the condiment and it being altered to a point where no one imagines ketchup being anything other than a sweet tomato kind of sauce.

But its origins are in China, which is interesting, because we think of it as a uniquely American sauce or condiment.

Yes, I love the history of that.

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