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 was a perennial winner in the annual Restaurant list of the Top 50 Restaurants of the World; the voting process has since been changed to disallow previous winners from being considered.
Jeremiah Tower is an American celebrity chef who, along with Alice Waters and Wolfgang Puck, has been credited with pioneering the culinary style known as California cuisine. A food lover from childhood, he had no formal culinary education before beginning his career as a chef.
Michael Mina is an American celebrity chef, restaurateur, and cookbook author. He is the founder of the Mina Group, a restaurant management company operating over 40 restaurants worldwide. He is the executive chef at his two namesake restaurants in San Francisco and Las Vegas, which each have earned a star in the Michelin Guide. He authored his first cookbook in 2006 and has made numerous television appearances.
Laurent Manrique is a French restaurateur and Michelin-starred chef. He currently owns establishments in San Francisco and Mexico.
Chris Cosentino is an American celebrity chef and reality television personality known as the winner of Top Chef Masters, a competitor on The Next Iron Chef and for his appearances on Iron Chef America. He is known for his haute cuisine offal dishes, and was chef-partner at Incanto in San Francisco. Forbes Traveler called Incanto "perhaps America's most adventurous nose-to-tail restaurant … On offer are lamb's necks, pig trotters and a five-course nose-to-tail tasting menu perhaps including venison kidneys and chocolate-blood panna cotta." Incanto closed on March 24, 2014. In December 2014, he opened Cockscomb, a restaurant centered around his updated interpretations of classic San Francisco dishes.
The Culinary Revolution was a movement during the late 1960s and 1970s, when sociopolitical issues began to profoundly affect the way Americans eat. The Culinary Revolution is often credited to Alice Waters, the owner of Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California.
Chef Clyde Serda is an American chef and writer. Well known in the industry as “Chef Clyde” he has been a writer for The Culinarian Magazine for over thirteen years. He has worked at notable restaurants including Commander's Palace, New Orleans and The World Trade Club, San Francisco, and owned and operated the business Simply Outrageous Catering in the San Francisco Bay Area. Over the years Serda has written several articles in the culinary field as well as appeared on TV spots and published many recipes. Serda has worked on the Board of Directors for the Chef Association of the Pacific Coast and has served as a past President for two terms. He is currently Chairman for the prestigious Antonin Carême Medal Trustees.
The California Culinary Academy (CCA) was a for-profit school, and an affiliate of Le Cordon Bleu located in San Francisco, California. Danielle Carlisle established the school in 1977 to train chefs using the European education model. The original location on the corner of Fremont and Howard Street in the South of Market area of San Francisco, was located in the remodeled, top-floor, cafeteria in the Del Monte headquarters. The academy trained more than 15,000 people for restaurant careers through its 30-week baking and pastry chef program and 16-month culinary arts degree program. It was purchased by Career Education Corporation in 1999.
Gary Danko is an American chef. He combines French, Mediterranean, and American styles into his cooking. He is best known for his eponymous restaurant in San Francisco, California.
Takashi Yagihashi is a Japanese chef, residing in the United States. He specializes in a fusion of French and Asian cuisine.
Hugh Acheson is a Canadian-born chef and restaurateur. He has owned four restaurants in Georgia, and serves as a judge on the reality cooking competition show Top Chef, and as an Iron Chef on Iron Chef Canada.
Kunal Kapur is an Indian chef and restaurateur known for hosting and judging MasterChef India.
Logan Guleff is a television personality, cookbook author, entrepreneur, and owner of Logan's Underground Supper Club. In 2014, he became the winner of the second season of the American reality cooking competition MasterChef Junior. In 2016, Guleff was listed in Time Magazine's "30 Most Influential Teens" as "a rising star in the culinary world".
Peter Clark Kump was an American figure in the culinary arts. The founder of Peter Kump’s New York Cooking School, he also co-founded the James Beard Foundation with Julia Child.
Edward Lee is a Brooklyn-born celebrity chef, author and restaurateur. He has made numerous television appearances on shows including The Mind of a Chef and Top Chef as well as a judge on Gordon Ramsay's Culinary Genius. He is a nine-time James Beard Award nominee, owns multiple restaurants throughout the United States and the Caribbean, and is the author of two award-winning books Buttermilk Graffiti and Smoke and Pickles.
Dominique Crenn is a French chef. As of 2016, she was the only female chef in the United States to attain three Michelin stars, for her restaurant Atelier Crenn, in San Francisco. Crenn has been featured in several Food Network and other television shows.
Abby Fisher, sometimes spelled as Abbie Fisher was an American former slave from South Carolina who earned her living as a pickle manufacturer in San Francisco and published the second known cookbook by a Black woman in the United States, after Malinda Russell's Domestic Cook Book: Containing a Careful Selection of Useful Receipts for the Kitchen (1866). Abby Fisher's book, What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking, was published in 1881 by the Women's Cooperative Printing Office in San Francisco.
Melissa King is an American chef and television personality. King is known for her appearances on the reality competition series Top Chef. She first appeared on the twelfth season of Top Chef: Boston, placing fourth; she then returned for the seventeenth season, Top Chef: All-Stars L.A., which she won. She specializes in modern Californian cuisine with Asian flavors.
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.
Charles Phan is an American chef, cookbook author, and restaurateur. He is the executive chef and founder of "The Slanted Door" restaurant in San Francisco, California and The Slanted Door Group of restaurants. He has published two cookbooks on Vietnamese cuisine.
