I’ve spent over 40 years in professional kitchens, cooking for some of the most demanding clientele in the world — and I’ve learned that the tool in your hand matters as much as the recipe in front of you.
I trained at the École Hôtelière de Murbach in Alsace, France, and was named Best Apprentice Chef in the Haut-Rhin region before I’d even finished school. From there, I spent two years working at the American Embassy in Paris, France — a job that taught me more about precision and consistency than almost anything since. During that time, I had the honor of cooking for then-President Jimmy Carter and many luminaries.
The decades that followed took me through kitchens in Los Angeles, Antigua, and Barcelona, before I co-founded Kokkari and Evvia in San Francisco — two restaurants that became local institutions and Gourmet magazine favorites. Later, I moved to Shanghai to run Shikumen Bistro, where our wine program was ranked among the top three in the city by Wine Spectator, and eventually to Macau, where I co-founded a culinary consultancy and helped build a culinary sciences degree program at Macau University of Science and Technology, training over 200 students in the F&B program.
For the past five years, I’ve served as Executive Chef in a private club in the Bay Area, cooking daily for a membership that includes some of the wealthiest and smartest people in the country.
This site is what I know now, boiled down to what actually matters: which tools earn a permanent place in a kitchen, and which ones are noise. Nothing recommended here is because it’s trendy. It’s because I’d use it myself.
The Chefs Bench 