Andrew Cooper

Career Born in Brooklyn, New York, Andrew Cooper was shaped early by a small domestic kitchen where care was the point of the cooking. A grandmother in a tiny Brooklyn apartment, plus a “cowboy” dinner of beef stew with potatoes, gives a plain account of the kind of food memory that tends to stay useful in professional kitchens: simple dishes, handled with attention, can carry a family table. Formal training at the Culinary Institute of America and Florida International University gave that memory a technical frame, and the work that followed moved through a wide range of operating environments. Cooper’s career ran through New York, Switzerland, Miami, Australia, Hawaii, and New Mexico, with each posting adding experience in settings where timing, consistency, and service discipline are nonnegotiable. He worked as chef at Four Seasons Hotel in New York, chef at The Woodcrest Country Club in Syosset, New York, guest lecturer at Alpina International School of Hotel Management in Illanz, Switzerland, Chef Allan’s Restaurant in Miami, Florida, apprentice Executive Chef at Bretts Wharf Restaurant in Brisbane, Australia, senior sous chef at Four Seasons Hotel Westlake Village, and executive sous chef at Four Seasons Hotel Hualalai in Hawaii. The move from line work to guest lecturing shows a cook working across both execution and instruction, while later posts widened into executive responsibility. He later served as Executive Chef at Four Seasons Resort Rancho Encantado Santa Fe in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and today he is Executive Chef of La Quinta Resort & Club.

Signature

At La Quinta Resort & Club in La Quinta, California, Andrew Cooper leads as Executive Chef in 2025 with local and sustainable ingredients at the center of the kitchen. That focus suits a career spent inside large properties, where scale can flatten a kitchen’s identity unless the chef keeps the sourcing and the plate tied to place. His own standard is plain and domestic rather than performative. “I am around fancy food all day. My comfort food is being at home with my family and eating something simple, like meat loaf with ketchup crust and garlic-mashed potatoes.” The contrast matters: it places the professional kitchen next to the home table, without trying to romanticize either one.

Recognition/etc His formal training includes the Culinary Institute of America, and he also studied at Florida International University.