Zak Walters

The Place Born in Oklahoma, Walters inherited his love for cooking from his maternal grandmother. That beginning matters in the quietest way: not as decoration, but as a line of appetite and labor that continues through restaurants built around curing, butchery, griddles, and seafood. His current work includes executive chef at Breakfast by Salt’s Cure in Los Angeles and chef/co-owner of Sedalia’s in Oklahoma City. The Oklahoma City restaurant brought James Beard Semifinalist recognition, placing his seafood work within a national awards conversation without separating it from its local setting. At Sedalia’s, he opened a small oyster and seafood restaurant intended to celebrate the unexpected, joyful, and unique. The phrasing fits the scale of the project: small, ingredient-led, and pointed toward pleasure rather than formality.

The Method Before the Oklahoma seafood chapter, Walters co-founded Salt’s Cure in Los Angeles and later worked as chef/owner there. The restaurant became the clearest early expression of his method: whole-animal butchery and simple, rustic California-style cooking, with the animal considered in full rather than as isolated cuts. He and Chris Phelps have been described as proponents of cooking with whole animals in mind. In practice, that meant a kitchen identity built on house-cured meats, direct cooking, and a griddle that became as recognizable as the butcher block. Among the dishes tied closely to that work were oatmeal griddle cakes topped with rounds of cinnamon-sugar butter, a preparation the restaurant was described as beloved for. The dish carried the plainness of oats and butter, but also the memory-making force of repetition: batter, heat, a round of sweetened butter melting into the surface. Another defining plate was the pork chop at the Hollywood location, cited by Jonathan Gold in 2016 as the best pork chop in the city. The praise attached itself not to ornament, but to a single cut of meat cooked well enough to become a reference point.

The Range Walters also cooked as chef at The Misfit & Ingo’s Tasty Diner in Santa Monica. That role sits alongside the Los Angeles years as part of a career built through specific kitchens rather than abstract culinary branding. At Breakfast by Salt’s Cure, the morning side of his work has its own material vocabulary. In 2018, banana nut cakes served with butter were identified with the restaurant, extending the griddle-cake language from oatmeal and cinnamon-sugar butter into another form of breakfast comfort. The movement between cured meats, pork chop, pancakes, oysters, and seafood gives his cooking a practical range. Across those points, the through-line is not a fixed cuisine but a way of handling ingredients: whole animals considered fully, simple cooking treated seriously, and small restaurants used as places for exact, memorable dishes.