i. Biography
Italian cooking in Jackson Kalb’s restaurants is built around handwork and service pressure: handmade pastas, crispy romana-tonda pizzas, and vodka sauce calibrated to cling. At Ospi in Venice, Los Angeles, where Kalb is Chef/Owner, the red-sauce register is carried through a California lens without losing its basic obligations to texture, heat, and generosity. The Chef/Owner role, in this case, sits on formal hospitality training and station-level kitchen work before ownership. Kalb’s path through restaurant environments in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City matters less as biography than as operating context: repetition, speed, guest awareness, and the practical discipline needed to make pasta and pizza hold up through service.
Coming Up
Hospitality structure came first through Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration and Houston’s / Hillstone Restaurant Group. For Jackson Kalb, that meant learning restaurants as systems before treating cooking as authorship. The after-school culinary work as kitchen staff at Mélisse in Los Angeles, CA added the more immediate kitchen terms: pace, precision, and the expectations of a professional line. That foundation shows in restaurants built less as chef showcases than as service machines with a clear Italian vocabulary. Handmade and hand-stretched pastas, familiar sauces handled with care, and menus that balance polish with approachability all depend on the same underlying habits: sourcing, prep discipline, timing, and consistency across covers. Competition cooking on Top Chef, Season 19 in Houston, TX (2022) put those habits under a different kind of compression. The format shortens decision time and exposes weak technique quickly; Kalb’s prior training had already been shaped by kitchens and restaurant groups where consistency under pressure was part of the work. Today, Jackson is chef/owner of Jame Enoteca, chef/owner of Ospi, and chef/partner of Wake&Late.
Where They Are Now
At Jame Enoteca in El Segundo, California, where Kalb has been chef and owner from 2018 to the present, the craft is centered on local, market-driven ingredients for hand-rolled pastas, sandwiches, and salads. Its most direct expression is handmade and hand-stretched pasta: Italian technique adjusted to California produce and a restaurant pace built for regular use, not occasional display. At Ospi in Venice, California, the red-sauce joint is treated as a working model rather than décor. The restaurant is described as a refined celebration of a classic Brooklyn red sauce joint with a counterculture twist, influenced by Venice, California. Its signatures, including Cacio e Pepe Pizza with Asiago Fonduta, black pepper, and extra virgin olive oil, as well as spicy rigatoni, place familiar flavors inside a tighter technical frame. Flavor discipline also appears in how Kalb talks about ingredients. "It’s not used as a base flavor but more as an accent. It’s just not thought of as a star. On the other hand, I use a ton of it." He has also said, "For me it’s about educating people on it." The point is practical: a dish can be craveable while still moving a guest’s understanding of an ingredient or method.
Signature
The signature set — Cacio e Pepe Pizza, Ceci e Tria, Spicy rigatoni, and vodka sauce — maps the range of Kalb’s Italian register. Cacio e Pepe Pizza uses cheese, black pepper, and extra virgin olive oil in pizza form; Ceci e Tria points toward older Italian pasta traditions; Spicy rigatoni and vodka sauce sit closer to red-sauce comfort, where the test is balance, cling, heat, and repeatability.
Honors
Jackson Kalb has received StarChefs Los Angeles Rising Stars Award — Rising Star Chef (2021).
Profile updated July 2026
FAQ
Asked of Jackson
What is Jackson Kalb's current role?
Jackson Kalb is Chef/Owner of Ospi in Venice, California.
Where did Jackson Kalb train or study?
Jackson Kalb trained at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration and Houston’s / Hillstone Restaurant Group.
What is Jackson Kalb known for?
Italian food with a Californian twist.
