Chef
Preston Clark
- Discipline
- Chef
- Based in
- New York City, New York, United States
i. Biography
Salt, shellfish, pasta dough, and uni cream set the working vocabulary at Lure Fishbar in New York City, where Preston Clark’s cooking treated seafood as both raw-bar material and warm-kitchen structure. The register was coastal, but the operating context was New York: brine cut richness, shellfish carried comfort as well as polish, and sushi shared space with composed cooked plates built for a busy dining room. Crab and lobster ravioli folded blue crab and lobster with herbs, mascarpone, and ricotta, then finished the dish with uni cream sauce. Sea urchin bucatini, crispy oyster-deviled eggs, and branzino sliders extended that marine thread through pasta, small-format contrast, and casual service forms.
Career Arc
Formal culinary training gave Preston Clark a structured start at Culinary Institute of America (2002), before the work moved into service-driven kitchens. Café Meze and Jean-Georges Vongerichten's kitchen in New York City placed technique inside pace, repetition, and scale. Those rooms established the discipline required to cook across more than one register without losing control of standards. Opening-chef work asks for a different kind of craft: a menu has to become a functioning restaurant, not just a point of view. At El Paseo in north of San Francisco (from 2011), Preston Clark took on that role, translating authorship into nightly execution and helping put the restaurant into a wider public conversation. Seafood leadership in New York City now defines the current chapter. Preston Clark is Corporate Executive Chef and Culinary Director of Lure Fishbar (since 2014) and Executive Chef of Bar Mercer, roles that require consistency across menus, teams, and dining-room expectations.
The Current Chapter
Since 2014, the Corporate Executive Chef and Culinary Director role at Lure Fishbar in New York City has centered Preston Clark’s work in seafood without limiting it to one format. He is also Executive Chef of Lure Fishbar and Bar Mercer in New York City. The menu moves through seafood and sushi, but also pasta, dairy, herbs, crisp textures, and composed richness. Range is the operative skill. Crab and lobster ravioli leans into shellfish sweetness and dairy; sea urchin bucatini brings pasta directly into brine; crispy oyster-deviled eggs use crispness and creaminess against a marine base; branzino sliders put fish into a casual service form. The through-line is not a single style, but a working command of how fish and shellfish carry through raw, cooked, rich, bright, familiar, and slightly unexpected expressions. New York City is also part of the professional measure here. “I always dreamed of being a New York City chef; I think that that’s probably one of my biggest accomplishments.” Preston Clark has also said, “I was born in Manhattan and moved around a bit, but I am very excited that I’ve been here for as long as I’ve been here—about 10 years—and really proud that I’ve been able to hold this corner down for that long.” In trade terms, the claim is durability: a corner of the city held through service, staffing, menu maintenance, and repeat expectation.
Awards and Standing
Recognition has tracked both promise and restaurant-building work. Preston Clark's honors include James Beard Rising Star Award nomination, San Francisco Chronicle Top Ten New Restaurants list for El Paseo, and Rising Star Chef for putting El Paseo on the California restaurant map. Taken together, those notices mark early visibility, the impact of opening-chef work at El Paseo, and the sustained New York City seafood role that followed.
Profile updated July 2026
FAQ
Asked of Preston
What is Preston Clark's current role?
Preston Clark is chef at Lure Fishbar — Seafood.
Where did Preston Clark train or study?
Preston Clark trained at Culinary Institute of America.
What recognition has Preston Clark received?
James Beard Rising Star Award nomination.
