Ryan Simorangkir

Coming Up

Training at Le Cordon Bleu gave Ryan Simorangkir a technical base before he entered service. He then worked as a line cook / chef at Alain Ducasse’s restaurant at the W Hotel in Puerto Rico, where the pace and precision of service would have sharpened his timing in the kitchen. That combination of formal technique and lived experience defines how Simorangkir’s path reads now: not as a single ascent, but as a series of kitchens that each added another layer. Today, Ryan is Head Chef and co-owner of Sama Sama Kitchen (since 2013) and chef of Sate House, positions that show how firmly his work remains tied to the food he wants to cook.

Where They Are Now

At Sama Sama Kitchen in Santa Barbara, California, Ryan Simorangkir keeps Indonesian cuisine at the center of the menu and the restaurant’s identity. The role carries both oversight and continuity: the work of a chef whose present practice has been formed by time in different kitchens and by return to a clear point of focus. In Santa Barbara, that focus has a stable home.

Signature

Ryan's signature dishes include Pork belly porridge and Pork Belly Tacos. The two dishes show range within a narrow frame: one softened by porridge’s comfort, the other pushed into the faster, more portable register of a taco. Both keep pork belly at the center, but they present it through different textures and formats. In that sense, they point to how Simorangkir translates Indonesian influence into dishes that still read as his own.

In Their Words The quote is plain and revealing. It points to a period when the lessons were not only in formal kitchens, but in inexpensive food eaten close to the work itself. Simorangkir’s line gets at a common trade truth: a cooking voice is built not just through titles and technique, but through what a cook eats, notices, and keeps with them from place to place.