Cynthia Pawlcyn (born Minneapolis, Minnesota) is an American chef and cookbook author known for the restaurants she opened in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Napa Valley between 1983 and 2008. Pawlcyn was an early advocate for using local, sustainable meats, and produce in her restaurants. In 2009, Pawlcyn appeared in the first season of Bravo’s "Top Chef: Masters."
Pawlcyn is the daughter of Stephen Pawlcyn, an immigrant from Russia, and his wife Dorothy, of German and Norwegian ancestry. Her father founded a potato chip company and had a deep interest in food. She was born in Minneapolis and lived in Golden Valley, Minnesota in her childhood. [1]
Pawlcyn began working in a Minneapolis cooking school at the age of 13, and while in high school, she ran her own catering business. She earned a hotel and restaurant management degree from the University of Wisconsin-Stout. She took courses at Le Cordon Bleu and received formal training at La Varenne in Paris before working at The Pump Room in Chicago. She moved to California in 1980 to take a job at MacArthur Park. Pawlcyn left MacArthur Park to be the opening chef at Meadowood in St. Helena, California and then joined Bruce LeFavour at Rose et LaFavour. [1] [2]
Pawlcyn's first husband was Murdo Laird. [3] She married John Watanabe in May, 2008. [4]
In April 2014, Pawlcyn and her second husband John Watanabe were injured in a head-on collision in the Carneros district between Napa and Sonoma. The other car's driver had crossed the center divide of the highway. A four-year-old boy in the other car was killed, and his mother was injured. [5] Pawlcyn suffered 22 broken bones, was hospitalized for 15 days, and was confined to a wheelchair for months. [6] The driver of the other car pleaded no contest to a charge of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence. He had fallen asleep at the wheel, had been driving on a suspended license, and was sentenced to 60 days in jail, followed by 120 days of home detention. [7]
Her home in the hills above the Napa Valley was featured in O, The Oprah Magazine in 2009. It included a 1-1/2 acre fruit and vegetable garden, a swimming pool, a ceramic studio, plus a canvas-walled guest cabin. The kitchen was the largest room in the remodeled home and had lower-than-usual countertops because Pawlcyn is only 5'-2" tall. Her library of thousands of cookbooks occupied an entire room, with some volumes overflowing into her office. [4] Pawlcyn collects cookbooks, but her home and her personal library of about 3,800 books were destroyed in the 2020 Glass Fire in Napa County. She is beginning to rebuild the collection; people from all over Northern California bring her cookbooks from their own libraries. [8]
In the New York Times , food critic Eric Asimov wrote, "Cindy Pawlcyn has a talent for creating popular dining environments that meld satisfying, unchallenging food with just a bit of shtick." [9]
Mustards Grill, Yountville, opened 1983: [10] named for the wild mustard flowers that grow in the wine country every year, Mustards became known for French-trained chef-quality food in a casual setting.
Fog City Diner, San Francisco, opened in 1985. When Pawlcyn opened the Fog City Diner in 1985, it became an iconic restaurant because it served critically acclaimed food in a building that looked like an Airstream trailer. Visa filmed an ad about the Fog City Diner.
Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen, St. Helena, opened 2003: the restaurant was called Miramonte when it opened in 2003, but Pawlcyn changed the name to Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen within a year.
Go Fish/Brassica/Cindy Pawlcyn's Wood Grill & Wine Bar, St. Helena opened in 2006: in 2011, the restaurant committed to sustainability, took sushi off the menu. Shortly after that, Cindy and partner Sean Knight announced they would be transitioning Go Fish to a Mediterranean restaurant called Brassica, opening in September 2011. In 2012 the restaurant transitioned to another new concept called Cindy Pawlcyn's Wood Grill & Wine Bar.
Cindy Pawlcyn also was involved with opening Tra Vigne, Brix, Roti (opened in 1993), Betelnut, Buckeye Roadhouse, and Rio Grill. [2] She currently owns and runs Mustards Grill and Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen.
The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) is an American private college and culinary school specializing in culinary, baking, and pastry arts education. The school's primary campus is located in Hyde Park, New York, with branch campuses in St. Helena and Napa, California; San Antonio, Texas; and Singapore. The college, which was the first to teach culinary arts in the United States, offers associate, bachelor's, and master's degrees, and has the largest staff of American Culinary Federation Certified Master Chefs. The CIA also offers continuing education for professionals in the hospitality industry as well as conferences and consulting services. The college additionally offers recreational classes for non-professionals. The college operates student-run restaurants on its four U.S. campuses.
Thomas Aloysius Keller is an American chef, restaurateur, and cookbook author. 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. Sally Schmitt opened The French Laundry in 1978 and designed her menus around local, seasonal ingredients; she was a visionary chef and pioneer of California cuisine. Since 1994, 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.
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A tuna fish sandwich, known outside the United States as a tuna salad sandwich or a tuna sandwich, is a sandwich made from canned tuna—usually made into a tuna salad by adding mayonnaise, and sometimes other ingredients such as celery or onion—as well as other common fruits and vegetables used to flavor sandwiches. It is commonly served on sliced bread.
Stephanie Izard is an American chef and television personality best known as the first female chef to win Bravo's Top Chef, taking the title during its fourth season. She is the co-owner and executive chef of three award-winning Chicago restaurants, Girl and the Goat, Little Goat, and Duck Duck Goat, and opened her first restaurant, Scylla as chef-owner at the age of 27. Izard received a James Beard Foundation Award for "Best Chef: Great Lakes" in 2013 for her work at Girl and the Goat. She has made a number of appearances on Top Chef since her win, both as a guest judge on subsequent seasons and as a participant in Top Chef Duels. In 2017, Izard competed in the Food Network series Iron Chef Gauntlet, where she overall defeated chefs Bobby Flay, Michael Symon, and Masaharu Morimoto to obtain the title of Iron Chef.
The first season of the American reality competition show Top Chef Masters was broadcast on Bravo. It is a spin-off of Bravo's hit show Top Chef. In the first season, 24 world-renowned chefs competed against each other in weekly challenges. The program took place in Los Angeles. In the season finale that premiered on August 19, 2009, Rick Bayless was crowned Top Chef Master.
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Christopher Kostow is the executive chef at The Restaurant at Meadowood in Napa Valley, California. Under Chef Kostow, The restaurant was awarded three stars from the Michelin Guide in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. In 2013, Chef Kostow was awarded the James Beard Foundation Award for "Best Chef: West".
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The James Beard Foundation Awards are annual awards presented by the James Beard Foundation to recognize culinary professionals in the United States. The awards recognize chefs, restaurateurs, authors and journalists each year, and are generally scheduled around James Beard's May birthday.