Alex Phaneuf

Coming Up

At Lodge Bread Company, the co-founder role has been Phaneuf’s longest-running position since 2015, and it reflects a chef whose career has moved toward building and running a place as much as cooking in it. The pattern is one of accumulation: line work, production, and the discipline of repeated service turning into ownership. In 2018, that same logic carried into Hasiba, also in Los Angeles, where Phaneuf added co-founder to his name and extended the same working approach into a second project. The through-line here is not novelty but construction. Moving from kitchen labor into ownership changes the terms of the job: the chef is no longer only executing within someone else’s system, but helping define the system itself. With Hasiba in 2018, Phaneuf’s career took that step again, linking daily production to the responsibilities of making a room function.

Where They Are Now

Since 2015, Phaneuf has led Lodge Bread Company as Executive Chef and co-owner, with bread as the main product and the operational focus. That bread demands a different kind of attention than plated cooking: timing, consistency, and the repeatable control of dough are the work, and the bakery’s identity depends on them. In 2018, he co-founded Hasiba in Los Angeles and took on the role of chef there as well. The move widened his scope from bakery leadership into restaurant ownership, while keeping the same practical stance toward food. “I’d rather serve the croissant that’s going to get smashed in the face than the most photogenic one.” It’s a straightforward measure of value: food is for being eaten, not staged. That position comes from long hours in kitchens, not from theory. “The food industry was something I always wanted to get into. I’ve worked in kitchens since I was 14 and I fell in love with the business ever since.” The line places the work early and keeps it there, with the continuity of labor carrying through into the present roles.

In Their Words “I’d rather serve the croissant that’s going to get smashed in the face than the most photogenic one.” “The food industry was something I always wanted to get into. I’ve worked in kitchens since I was 14 and I fell in love with the business ever since.”

Honors

Alex's honors include 2021 StarChefs Los Angeles Rising Stars Restaurateur Award Winner.