Steve Samson

The Path

Training at Institute of Culinary Education and University of California, San Diego gave Steve Samson the structure and discipline that later show up in the way he runs a kitchen and shapes a menu. That foundation matters in his work: the technique is there, but so is the organization required to build and sustain restaurants over time. At Sotto in Beverly Hills (2011–2019), Steve Samson moved from training into a public role as chef/owner. That period marks a clear shift from learning the trade to putting his own version of it into the room, where the restaurant itself became part of his professional language. The later years broadened that authorship across Los Angeles. Steve Samson is chef/owner of Rossoblu (since 2017), chef/owner of Superfine (since 2018), and chef/owner of Superfine Playa (since 2023). Read together, those dates show steady expansion: not a change of subject, but more ways to work within the same Italian frame in different parts of the city.

The Work Today

At Rossoblu in Los Angeles, the cooking is tied to place and personal memory without losing its trade footing. Steve Samson has said, “I want Rossoblu to tell my story, and my story is just as much about Los Angeles as it is about summers with my grandparents in Bologna, Italy.” The quote is useful because it names the two poles of the work plainly: city and family history, held together through the restaurant. At Superfine Pizza in Los Angeles, the same through-line stays in view. The restaurants are not presented as abstractions; they are working expressions of Italian cooking shaped by an owner-chef’s taste, memory, and sense of place.

Signature

Tagliatelle al Ragù is one of Steve Samson’s signature dishes, and it fits the larger shape of his work. It sits in the tradition of Bologna, where the technique and the lineage matter as much as the plate itself, and it connects directly to the family reference point he has named in relation to his cooking.

In Their Words “I want Rossoblu to tell my story, and my story is just as much about Los Angeles as it is about summers with my grandparents in Bologna, Italy.” “I’m not the type of guy to say no to anyone.”

Acclaim

The main markers in Steve Samson’s career are the chef-owner roles he has held across Sotto, Rossoblu, and Superfine Pizza. Taken together, they show a consistent practice of building restaurants around Italian cooking and ownership rather than around a single moment of visibility. His second quoted line keeps the hospitality side direct: “I’m not the type of guy to say no to anyone.” As a statement from a restaurateur, it reads as a simple rule of service and a broad welcome at the door.