Evan Funke (born 1978 in Los Angeles, California) is an American chef and pasta maker who is head chef and co-owner of a series of popular Italian restaurants across North America, including three in Los Angeles. He is a two-time James Beard nominee and has been described as Los Angeles' best pasta maker.[1][2][3]
Funke studied at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Pasadena but was recruited after six weeks by Wolfgang Puck, getting promoted until he became sous chef at Spago in Beverly Hills, California three years later.[7][8] In 2008, Funke moved to Bologna to study pasta making in Italy, studying at La Vecchia Scuola Bolognese (VSB).[9] He was trained under master sfoglina Alessandra Spisni, who became his mentor.[9][10]
While in Italy, Funke ate pasta cacio e pepe three times a day for 23 days straight to "discover its true essense", and is credited as one of the driving factors behind the dish's popularity in the United States.[10][11] He has rolled sfoglia over 35,000 times, mastering 155 different shapes.[10]
After returning from Bologna, Funke worked at Rustic Canyon in Santa Monica where he was executive chef from 2008 to 2012.
Career
From 2013 to 2015, Funke was chef at Bucato in Los Angeles, an acclaimed Italian restaurant which was the only restaurant in the United States to exclusively serve pasta made correctly entirely by hand.[8][12] Bucato closed in 2015.[13]
He also is chef of Mother Wolf in Hollywood, Los Angeles which he debuted in early 2022. The restaurant features food inspired by dishes from Rome and the surrounding Lazio region of Italy. The restaurant quickly becomes a hotspot with a 1,500 person waitlist to be "one of the country’s most coveted culinary experiences".[10][15][16]
In January 2023, Funke opened Funke in Beverly Hills which Beverly Hills Courier called as "the hottest ticket in town".[17] The restaurant, described as a tri-level atelier, was named one of the top new restaurants by Los Angeles Magazine and is included in the Michelin Guide.[18][19]
Mother Wolf expanded later in 2023, opening a location at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas in addition to its original Venice outpost.[20][21][22] The restaurant is described as one of the best Italian restaurants in Las Vegas.[23]
He previously was the host of a show on Quibi, Shape of Pasta, in which he scoured the Italian countryside in search of unique pastas with geographical significance which he learned from sfoglini.[43] He has described the show as part of his "life's work" to document and preserve traditions of pasta before they become extinct.[44]
American Sfoglino: A Master Class in Handmade Pasta. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. 2019. ISBN9781452173313. It won the 2020 James Beard Foundation Award for Best Photography.[51]
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