Brad Cecchi

Brad Cecchi is an Executive Chef and owner whose work is shaped by place, season, memory, and technique. He is based in a current kitchen in Viana do Castelo, Portugal, and also leads Canon in Sacramento, California. His record runs through culinary training, hotel kitchens, California restaurants, and a Michelin star earned at Solbar while he was Executive Chef. Formal training gave his early structure. He studied at El Camino High School, American River College, and The Culinary Institute of America before moving fully onto the line. His first line cook role at Embassy Suites in Old Sacramento, California, put that training into a live kitchen, where pace, mise en place, and precision were tested in service. He then worked as an apprentice at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and later returned to Sacramento for opening work at Mulvaney’s, where he served as opening cook and then lead line cook. Those roles built the working grammar of the trade through repetition, urgency, attention, and small correct decisions under pressure. At Grange in Sacramento, California, Cecchi served as executive sous chef from 2008 to 2013, a role that required technical fluency and steadiness across people, prep, and service. He then became Executive Chef at Westin in Cleveland, Ohio, before taking the Executive Chef role at Solbar in Calistoga, California, from 2014. During his tenure at Solbar, the restaurant earned a Michelin star, placing that chapter of his career within one of the industry’s most closely watched forms of recognition. His current work continues on two fronts. Camelo in Viana do Castelo, Portugal, is a kitchen shaped by Atlantic conditions, older street life, and local appetite. It holds a Bib Gourmand, placing the restaurant within Michelin Guide recognition and underscoring a style read through location as much as résumé. Canon in Sacramento, California, is his other active restaurant, where he serves as chef and owner. There, the menu centers on playful, shareable, seasonal small plates, and the format depends on pacing, contrast, and the social rhythm of passing and tasting. The named dishes associated with his cooking point to a clear interest in contrast. Chicken wing, badger flame beet salad, Pork Belly with Avocado, Pickled Onions and Sweet Potato Kimchi, Sweet Potato Dumplings, and Grilled Sweet Potatoes with Lebneh all reflect an approach that sets richness against acidity, sweetness against smoke, and familiar forms against sharper edges. The result is cooking that keeps culture, season, and technique in the same frame while remaining grounded in the practical demands of service. Cecchi has said he is a fan of food and the cultural influences that drive flavor, preparation, and presentation, and looks to them for inspiration for his own creative expression.