Meet the Chefs
Many of the Bay Area’s premier soul food, Caribbean, Southern-inspired chefs will be appearing at The sf|noir Wine & Food Event from February 24-28. Read about some of these talented chefs below…
Michele Wilson is a self-taught chef who has owned and operated 3 restaurants serving creative, delicious southern favorites. She is the chef personality who brings Real Food for the Soul to life, a Radio One program featuring the best in modern and traditional African American cuisine. Michele has been featured in numerous TV, magazine and radio spots and has a vast clientele including celebrities such as the Golden State Warriors, R&B star Eric Benet and many others. She started Full Circle Hospitality L.L.C. to open her newest venture Gussie’s Chicken and Waffles on Eddy Street in the Western Addition.
David Lawrence is Executive Chef and Managing Partner of 1300 on Fillmore, a restaurant and lounge that draws on the rich cultural history of San Francisco’s Fillmore Jazz district. Located in the revitalized Fillmore Heritage Jazz District, the restaurant serves “Soulful American” cuisine, accompanied by a list of the finest California wines and a full bar. The restaurant opened in October, 2007 to rave reviews.
At 1300 David Lawrence combines classic French cooking techniques with hints of southern flavors using fresh, California seasonal ingredients. Lawrence received his formal culinary training at Westminster College in London. In 1982 he joined England’s most celebrated and honored culinarians, Albert and Michael Roux, the chef proprietors of the world-renowned Le Gavroche and the Waterside Inn (both three star Michelin restaurants). Lawrence worked at five of the Roux brothers’ establishments, rapidly advancing from apprentice to sous chef in four short years. In 1986, Lawrence was appointed as chef de cuisine at London’s chic Interlude Restaurant where he had the honor of preparing meals for the Prince and Princess of Wales; Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon; and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Notable chef, Robert Dorsey, has been a part of the Bay Area restaurant scene for over two decades. A Berkeley native, Robert’s passion for great food, locally grown ingredients and an eclectic palate have afforded him the opportunity to work in some of the Bay Area’s finest kitchens. Fascinated by food at an early age, he talked his way into his first restaurant job at the ripe age of 14. To date, his culinary pedigree includes stints at many of the Bay Area’s favorite spots and previously his own restaurant in Oakland called the Blackberry Bistro.
Robert is a personal chef as well as a consultant to a number of restaurants that have drawn upon his knowledge and expertise in both front and back of the house operations. His expertise includes restaurant concept development, menu and kitchen design, staffing and vendor sourcing. He is currently working on a new venture slated to open in the spring of 2010. His new venture will again highlight the cultural diversity of the San Francisco Bay Area with a focus on sustainable practices, bold flavors, and a hip scene. Be on the look out as Oakland is in for a treat!
Locally-grown Chef Peter Jackson always knew he was a little spoiled. “My parents both cooked a lot when I was a child,” Jackson admits, “so shopping and dining in Berkeley were always important to me. I grew up around the corner from Chez Panisse, so I thought all restaurants were creative, fun places to work and that they all used local, sustainable, and organic ingredients. At Miss Pearl’s Jam House, Jackson focuses on harmonizing his passions for regional cuisine. He describes his sensibility as a hybrid of Old World traditions and New World flair and adds, “My approach emphasizes the diversity of culinary influences we see in both the American South and in warm weather beach cultures,” said Jackson. At the same time, also present is a strong California influence from 20 years of cooking in the Bay Area. “Certain dishes, like my gumbo, I keep refining over the years.” Jackson honed his skills with Creole food with lengthy stages in New Orleans where he worked at such famed restaurants as August, with Chef John Besh.
Jackson brings a relatively new style of cuisine to Miss Pearl’s: “Gulf” cuisine is rich in cultural influences and intensely satisfying. It bears distinct accents from the North American Gulf Coast, the Caribbean islands, and the heart of Mexican cuisine. The menu spans the aquamarine waters of the Caribbean, the raucous parties and captivating streets of New Orleans and the local’s only hideaways of the Mexican coast. Jackson’s menu is both dynamic and casual, with throwbacks to the original Miss Pearl’s such as the Crispy Catfish Po’ Boy. New items include rich, complex dishes like the Jam House Seafood Jambalaya; Chicken Pontalba with housemade Tasso; and street food favorites like Pasteles, Puerto Rican style tamales.
Michael Anthony Law takes his professional development seriously. In an 18-year culinary career, this native of Winston-Salem has worked as cook, sous chef and pastry chef at restaurants in North Carolina, New Orleans, Tucson, Seattle, Larkspur, Germany, France and Spain before landing in San Francisco. He also draws upon his mother’s cooking from her Dominican Republic homeland.
Michael moved into top chef spot at The Front Porch, the popular restaurant located in San Francisco’s Mission District on 29th Street in 2009. Founded in the summer of 2006 by Josey White in partnership with Kevin Cline, the Front Porch attracts a diverse clientele of local residents and out-of-town visitors of varying ages and backgrounds, in search of home-style cooking in a warm and cordial atmosphere. Michael Law succeeds founding chef Sarah Kirnon who established the original menu and who recently opened the popular Hibiscus restaurant in Oakland.
Chef Edward Blyden was born in Nigeria. His father, a Harvard-educated diplomat from Sierra Leone, and his mother, a Columbia University graduate from Boston, raised their seven children on three continents. Dr. Amelia Blyden recalls her son as a creative child with busy hands and an active imagination. His sister remembers her ten-year-old brother inventing berry compounds at camp in Russia and announcing to all the children (in Russian) that he wanted to be a chef when he grew up.
Chef Blyden’s gastronomic education was as creative and deep as his love for natural, healthy food. His earliest memories are in his aunt’s kitchen in Sierra Leone where he learned West African recipes for jams, wines and confectionaries made of exotic tropical fruits such as star fruit, carambola, guava, papaya, tamarind and sunarian cherries. Later, he built on these traditional West African and Caribbean influences with formal culinary training in some of the world’s best restaurants from New York and Munich to Switzerland and the British West Indies.
Today, as Executive Chef of Henry’s gastro-pub, in Berkeley, California, Blyden continues to celebrate the slow food movement utilizing sustainable produce grown from local organic farms as well as natural and free range meat and poultry. His culinary creations honor tradition, reflect the many cultures he has lived in, and embrace the international tenor of the local neighborhood.
Chef Blyden’s philosophy is to “keep it simple.” In his words, “Food is like music. You can compose a simple song or a sophisticated symphony using the same musical notes. In the kitchen, you can combine herbs, flavors, colors, and the best natural ingredients to create a snack or a gourmet meal. All you need to do is build on the integrity of the ingredients to allow the simple elegance of the food to shine through.”
More Chefs will be participating in both The Shrimp & Grits Taste-Off and The Wine & Food Gala! like Chef Dean Dupuis from Pican in Oakland, Chef Sarah Kirnon from Hibiscus in Oakland and Chef Marco Senghor from Baobab in San Francisco. Bios were not immediately available, however.