Benu is a three-Michelin star restaurant located in the SoMa district of downtown San Francisco opened in 2010 by chef Corey Lee, the former head chef at the French Laundry. Benu made the list of The World's 50 Best Restaurants in 2019.
Chez Panisse is a Berkeley, California, restaurant, known as one of the inspirations for the style of cooking known as California cuisine, and the farm-to-table movement. The restaurateur, author and food activist Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse in 1971 with the film producer Paul Aratow, then a professor of comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley. The restaurant emphasises ingredients rather than technique and has developed a supply network of direct relationships with local farmers, ranchers and dairies.
Thomas Aloysius Keller is an American chef, restaurateur, and cookbook writer. He and his landmark Napa Valley restaurant, The French Laundry in Yountville, California, have won multiple awards from the James Beard Foundation, notably the Best California Chef in 1996, and the Best Chef in America in 1997. The restaurant is a perennial winner in the annual Restaurant Magazine list of the Top 50 Restaurants of the World.
The French Laundry is a three-Michelin star French and Californian cuisine restaurant located in Yountville, California, in the Napa Valley. The chef and owner of the French Laundry is Thomas Keller. The restaurant building dates from 1900 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
California-style pizza is a style of single-serving pizza that combines New York and Italian thin crust with toppings from the California cuisine cooking style. Its invention is generally attributed to chef Ed LaDou, and Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, California. Wolfgang Puck, after meeting LaDou, popularized the style of pizza in the rest of the country. It is served in many California Cuisine restaurants. Such restaurant chains as California Pizza Kitchen, Round Table Pizza, Extreme Pizza, and Sammy's Woodfired Pizza are four major pizza franchises associated with California-style pizza.
A chef de cuisine or head chef is a chef that leads and manages the kitchen and chefs of a restaurant or hotel. A chef patron or executive chef is a chef that owns and/or manages restaurants and their staffs.
A tasting menu is a collection of several dishes in small portions, served by a restaurant as a single meal. The French name for a tasting menu is menu dégustation. Some restaurants and chefs specialize in tasting menus, while in other cases, it is a special or a menu option. Tasting menus may be offered to provide a sample of a type of cuisine, a house specialty, or to take advantage of fresh seasonal ingredients.
Michael Carl Ruhlman is an American author, home cook and entrepreneur.
Restaurants fall into several industry classifications, based upon menu style, preparation methods and pricing, as well as the means by which the food is served to the customer.
The Gourmet Ghetto was a colloquial name for the business district of the North Berkeley neighborhood in the city of Berkeley, California, known as the birthplace of California cuisine. Other developments that can be traced to this neighborhood include specialty coffee, the farm-to-table and local food movements, the rise to popularity in the U.S. of chocolate truffles and baguettes, the popularization of the premium restaurant designed around an open kitchen, and the California pizza made with local produce. The business district, also known as Gourmet Gulch, is sometimes more formally referred to as "North Shattuck." After coalescing in the mid-1970s as a culinary destination, the neighborhood received its "Gourmet Ghetto" nickname in the late 1970s from comedian Darryl Henriques. Early, founding influences were Peet's Coffee, Chez Panisse and the Cheese Board Collective. Alice Medrich began her chain of Cocolat chocolate stores there.
Carnation Cafe is an American comfort food restaurant located in Main Street, U.S.A. at Disneyland in Anaheim, California in the United States. The restaurant opened in 1955 as Carnation Cafe Ice Cream Parlor.
The Tadich Grill is a seafood restaurant located in the Financial District neighborhood of San Francisco, California, United States. It is the oldest continuously running restaurant in San Francisco, having opened in 1849 as a coffee stand. In the 1920s, the Tadich Grill claimed to be the first American restaurant to grill seafood over mesquite charcoal, a traditional Croatian method.
Per Se is a New American and French restaurant located on the fourth floor of the Time Warner Center at 10 Columbus Circle in Manhattan in New York City, owned by chef Thomas Keller. The Chef de Cuisine is Corey Chow. For years, it has maintained three Michelin stars.
Hominy Grill was a restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina. It was located at 207 Rutledge Avenue, in the heart of historic downtown Charleston. Just a few blocks away from the iconic Rainbow Row, the restaurant has been delighting tourists and locals alike for almost 24 years. Chef Robert Stehling has been honored by the James Beard Foundation Award as the best chef in the Southeastern United States in 2008 and the restaurant has been featured on The Best Thing I Ever Ate, No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain, Amazing Eats (shrimp & grits and the "Big Nasty" and Man v. Food. The restaurant features amped-up Southern classics and Lowcountry cuisine with an elevated twist.
Bouchon is a French-style restaurant with locations in Yountville, California, New York City and Las Vegas. The restaurant was founded by Thomas Keller in 1998.
El Dorado Kitchen is a restaurant and bar located in Sonoma, California in the United States. It is located on the property of the El Dorado Inn in downtown Sonoma.
Judy Rodgers was an American chef, restaurateur, and cookery book writer. She became famous at Zuni Café, in San Francisco, California, of which she became chef in 1987. Rodgers' food was influenced both by Chez Panisse, where she had worked, and by the food of France, where she had spent time as an exchange student living with the family of Jean Troisgros. The Zuni Café Cookbook, published in 2002, spread the influence of her painstaking, attentive approach to food further outside the United States.
Ad Hoc at Home: Family-Style Recipes is a 2009 cookbook written by American chef Thomas Keller with Dave Cruz. The cookbook presents over 250 recipes for home-style food. The cookbook won the 2010 James Beard Foundation Award for the best general cooking cookbook.
Cafe La Haye is a restaurant in Sonoma, California in the United States. It was opened by owner Saul Gropman in 1996. When Michael Bauer was food critic of the San Francisco Chronicle, Cafe La Haye was a perennial listing in his annual Top 100 restaurants list and one of his favorite restaurants in Wine Country. Cafe La Haye sources food produced within 60 miles of the restaurant.
The Saturn Cafe is a vegetarian diner in Los Angeles with former locations in Santa Cruz and Berkeley. Its original Santa Cruz location was established in 1979 and closed in 2021; the Los Angeles restaurant opened in 2020. The Santa Cruz location has been variously owned by Don Lane, a husband and wife team, and former employees of the diner. The Berkeley location of Saturn Cafe was open from 2009 to 2018.
