The People · Page 8

Chef
San Carlos, Costa Rica
Before the Executive Chef role at Nayara Springs in San Carlos, Costa Rica, the cooking associated with William Weiss was formed through hotel kitchens, fine-dining stations, and…

Executive Chef, Chao Shang Chao (Chaoyang)
Beijing, China
Yat Fung Cheung is the Executive Chef at Chao Shang Chao (Chaoyang) in Beijing, where he has led the restaurant to three Michelin stars in 2024 and 2025, specializing in refined…

Owner & Chef, Kikunoi
Tokyo, Japan
Kaiseki’s Kyoto origin is not a backdrop detail; it defines the operating system of the cuisine. In Yoshihiro Murata’s work, the form is built around season, nature, ingredient…

Owner Chef, Hyotei
Kyoto, Japan
By 1999, Yoshihiro Takahashi was head chef there; today he is owner chef, carrying traditional tea kaiseki through a house where continuity is maintained by repeated acts: stock…

Chef, Il Pagliaccio
Rome, Italy
Technique built from formal hotel-school discipline gives this cooking its first frame: Anthony Genovese trained at École Hôtelière de Nice (1985), then worked through Florence…

Chef & Owner, D'O
Cornaredo, Italy
Davide Oldani is an Italian chef born in 1967 in Cornaredo, Lombardy, who created the philosophy of Cucina POP, blending high quality with accessibility, and opened his restaurant…

Chef
Madrid, Spain
## The Climb Since 2021, Diego Murciego has held the chef’s post at Desde 1911, a role built on daily judgment rather than gesture. The work asks for exact sourcing, a steady hand…

Head Chef & Proprietor, The Black Swan at Oldstead; Co-Proprietor, Roots York
Oldstead, United Kingdom
Tommy Banks (born 3 June 1989) is a British Michelin-starred chef and restaurateur from North Yorkshire who became Britain's youngest Michelin-starred chef at age 24 in 2013 when…

Chef
New York City, New York, United States
Vijay Kumar’s cooking at Semma in the West Village, New York City, is built from memory but executed as trade: direct, disciplined, and shaped by inheritance. Across San…

Chef
Oakham, United Kingdom
## Coming Up The early grammar of the work was learned in a family kitchen in Leicester, where weekends in Father’s kitchen gave Aaron Patterson the basic discipline that sits…

Chef
New York City, New York, United States
Emma Bengtsson has been executive chef of Aquavit in New York City since 2014, and the role is defined by the control she brings to one of the city’s most closely watched dining…

Chef
Seoul, South Korea
Executive Chef Kim Jin-hyuk leads Alla Prima in Seoul, South Korea. His cooking moves across Japanese, French, Italian, molecular, and creative registers, with definition coming…

Cocktail Service Professional
New York City, New York, United States
## The Path Head bartending at Angel’s Share in New York put Takuma Watanabe inside one of the city’s most closely watched cocktail rooms, where precision and atmosphere carried…
Chef
New York City, New York, United States
## Coming Up The line work at Eleven Madison Park is where Wayne Cheng’s discipline was formed in public: Chef de Partie in 2018, inside a kitchen known for pace, precision, and…

Chef Patron, Trinity
London, United Kingdom
Adam Byatt is a Michelin-starred chef and restaurateur known for his modern British cuisine, having opened Trinity in Clapham in 2006, which earned a Michelin star in 2016 and AA…

Chef
Amsterdam, Netherlands
From the Netherlands to Ciel Bleu in Amsterdam, Arjan Speelman’s career has been shaped by concentration rather than sprawl. The 2025 SVH Master Chef recognition sits within that…

Chef
New York City, New York, United States
## Coming Up Seoul, South Korea, and the family table sit at the center of David Shim’s cooking. The work reads through that lens: food as a setting for time together, not just…

Chef
Tokyo, Japan
Guillaume Bracaval works the French line in Tokyo with Japanese seasonality as his counterpoint. At est, the cooking is built on haute cuisine discipline, but the ingredients…

Restaurateur
New York City, New York, United States
## Coming Up The floor teaches the basics first: sequence, timing, pace, and how to read a room. Kim’s start at Kori in Tribeca, New York City, in 1998 moved through busboy,…

Chef
Reguengos de Monsaraz, Portugal
Carlos De Albuquerque Teixeira is the chef at Herdade do Esporão in Reguengos de Monsaraz, Portugal. The role sits across service and estate rhythms: a kitchen built to answer the…

Farm Manager and Viticulturist, Klein Constantia
Cape Town, South Africa
Craig Harris is Farm Manager and Viticulturist at Klein Constantia. He is responsible for farming the estate's 146 hectares on the eastern slopes of Constantiaberg, where…

Chef
Bangkok, Thailand
## Coming Up At Embassy Room La Marina, Park Hyatt Bangkok, Daniele Ferrari has held the Head Chef role since 2024. The work reads as controlled and direct: plates are built with…

Winemaker
Reguengos de Monsaraz, Portugal
## Coming Up Rosenworthy Agricultural College gave David Baverstock an early technical base, and that matters in a trade built on repeatable decisions. From there, his work in…

Chef de Cuisine, L'Envol
Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Hwang Byeonghyen is a South Korean chef who serves as Chef de Cuisine at L'Envol at The St. Regis Hong Kong in Wan Chai. L'Envol’s official team page says he has more than a…

Winemaker, Klein Constantia
Cape Town, South Africa
Matthew Day is the winemaker at Klein Constantia in Constantia, South Africa. A Stellenbosch University graduate, he gained experience in Saint-Émilion, the Barossa Valley and…

Culinary Director & Executive Chef, L'Envol at The St. Regis Hong Kong
Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Born in Germany on 18 April 1979, raised in France and French by nationality, Olivier Elzer works from a cross-border base into French haute cuisine, with invention held to the…

Chef
Cape Town, South Africa
## The Path Hotel kitchens gave Veronica Canha-Hibbert a clear working education in pace, discipline, and consistency. The sequence runs from Executive Chef at Ellerman House to…

Chef-Owner
San Francisco, California, United States
Chris Bleidorn is the chef-owner of Birdsong in San Francisco. He began his career at Nine-Ten in San Diego, worked with Grant Achatz at Alinea, and later cooked at Benu, Atelier…

Chef
Llagostera, Spain
Marc Gascons has built a quietly distinctive career around the flavours of his native Catalonia, steering the kitchen at Els Tinars in Llagostera, Spain, with a steady hand since…

Chef
Hampton in Arden, United Kingdom
## Coming Up The line from Maze carries weight because it names the point where pace, repetition and standards started to harden into a career. At Maze in Mayfair, David Taylor…

Chef
Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Eric Räty, chef-owner of Arbor in Hong Kong, works in a register of formation: formal training, early kitchen labor, pastry discipline, and a current practice shaped by…
Executive Chef, Lido Restaurant at The Surf Club
Surfside, Florida, United States
Marco Calenzo is the Florentine executive chef of Lido Restaurant at The Surf Club in Surfside. He arrived at the hotel in summer 2023 after working in Michelin-starred and…

Chef & Co-owner, Restaurant Ryuzu
Tokyo, Japan
Ryuta Iizuka, born in 1968 in Tokamachi City, Niigata Prefecture, Japan, trained at hotels including Hotel Okura Tokyo Bay and Hotel The Manhattan before joining the opening team…

Chef
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Rafa Costa is the Executive Chef/Owner of Lasai in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The work there is defined by a deliberate refusal of labels: no easy category, no built-in script. As…

Executive Chef & Owner, Lasai
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Rafa Costa e Silva is a Rio de Janeiro-born chef and owner of Lasai, a Michelin-starred farm-to-table restaurant in Rio's Botafogo neighborhood that he opened in 2014. After…

Executive Chef, Alex Dilling at Hotel Café Royal
London, United Kingdom
Alex Dilling is a London-born chef who trained at Westminster College before launching his career at Alain Ducasse's Adour in New York City, where he helped earn two Michelin…

Owner, El Gallo Altanero
Guadalajara, Mexico
Freddy Andreasson is the Swedish-born bartender and owner of El Gallo Altanero in Guadalajara. He moved to Mexico in 2016, immersed himself in the local agave community and helped…

Co-Founder and Bartender, Schmuck
New York City, New York, United States
Juliette Larrouy is a Southern France-raised bartender and co-founder of Schmuck in New York's East Village. She trained at culinary school in Paris, worked in Claude Colliot's…

Co-Founder and Bartender, Schmuck
New York City, New York, United States
Moe Aljaff is an Iraq-born, Sweden-raised bartender and co-founder of Schmuck in New York's East Village. After co-founding Two Schmucks in Barcelona in 2017, he and Juliette…

Chef
Basel, Switzerland
Tanja Grandits has led Stucki - Tanja Grandits in Basel, Switzerland, since 2008, and the restaurant is identified with a cooking style that is controlled, legible, and personal.…

Co-Founder, Tayēr + Elementary; Former Head Bartender, Artesian
London, United Kingdom
Alex Kratena’s work at Artesian is best read through the bar practice it produced: a high-volume luxury hotel setting used as a site for modern cocktail development, service…

Sommelier
New York City, New York, United States
## Coming Up Wine program work depends on structure as much as selection, and Annie Shi’s path through Yale University and into hospitality reflects that balance. The training…

Proprietor & Chef, Sojiki Nakahigashi
Kyoto, Japan
Hisao Nakahigashi is the chef and proprietor of Sojiki Nakahigashi, a two Michelin-starred restaurant in Kyoto's Ohara region, specializing in 'herbivorous cuisine' or So-Jiki,…

Chef
Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Martin Wishart’s cooking at Restaurant Martin Wishart in Leith, Edinburgh, sits in Modern European territory, with classical French technique carrying the work and Scottish…

Co-Founder, Tayēr + Elementary
London, United Kingdom
## Training and Lineage Bartending education in Oslo provides the first formal frame in this record: H. Butlers Bartending School is where Monica Berg trained, before later taking…

Winemaker
Elciego, Spain
His early training took shape in 1971, when at age 24 he went to Rueda and began experimenting there with Émile Peynaud. That first assignment placed him in a working dialogue…
Chef, Lei
New York City, New York, United States
Patty Lee is a Taiwanese American chef who leads the kitchen at Lei in New York's Chinatown. An alumna of Mission Chinese Food, she cooks a contemporary menu informed by Taiwanese…

Chef
Singapore, Singapore
Every morning, the work at Seroja starts from the same premise: excellence is chosen. At Seroja in Singapore, Kevin Wong uses that discipline to keep the restaurant’s pace steady,…

Chef
Vetrego, Italy
## The Climb Imperial Court has been the main working ground for Homan Tsui since 2018, where the measure of the kitchen is precision and the terms are regional Chinese…

Chef
Sacramento, California, United States
## Coming Up Kelly McCown’s line runs through Seattle, the Culinary Institute of America in California, Napa Valley, and Sacramento kitchens, with Elegant Napa Valley cuisine as…

Founder and Owner, Baba au Rum
Athens, Greece
Thanos Prunarus is defined by continuity in one room: Baba au Rum in Athens, founded in 2009 and still under his founding eye. That matters in bar work. It points to authorship…

Chef
Tokyo, Japan
## The Path At Sangencha in Kyoto and later as owner-chef at Shinohara in Shiga Prefecture, Takemasa Shinohara built a working vocabulary around discipline, memory, and instinct.…

Chef
Copenhagen, Denmark
On Denmark’s north coast, the cooking reads through the meeting point of land and water, with Brian Mark Hansen using fish and shellfish as the centre of the plate rather than as…

Chef
New York City, New York, United States
Charlie England’s work in New York restaurants reads as a study in repetition, pace, and earned authority. At Torrisi in New York City, where he has served as Executive Chef since…

Chef & Owner, Torre del Saracino
Vico Equense, Italy
Gennaro Esposito is the chef and owner of Torre del Saracino in Seiano, Vico Equense, on the Sorrento Peninsula, which he opened in 1991 focusing on local ingredients and creative…

Chef, Home by James Sommerin
Penarth, United Kingdom
Georgia Sommerin is a Welsh chef at Home in Penarth, where she cooks alongside her father, James Sommerin, and has a particular interest in pastry. She began working in…

Chef-Owner, Home by James Sommerin
Penarth, United Kingdom
James Sommerin is a Welsh chef and the chef-owner of Home in Penarth. He began cooking at age 12, later led The Crown at Whitebrook, opened Restaurant James Sommerin in 2014, and…

Chef & Proprietor, Le Chambard
Kaysersberg, France
Olivier Nasti, born December 9, 1966 in Belfort, France, is the chef-owner of Le Chambard in Kaysersberg, Alsace, where La Table d'Olivier Nasti holds two Michelin stars since…

Head Chef, Henne Kirkeby Kro
Henne, Denmark
## The Climb Kitchen formation here runs through pubs, country house hotels, fish station work, and Danish restaurant kitchens before ownership and long-service head chef work.…

Chef, Il Luogo di Aimo e Nadia
Paris, France
Alessandro Negrini, born in 1978 in Caspoggio, Valmalenco, Lombardy, Italy, is a chef who graduated from hotel school in Sondrio and trained at prestigious venues including Palace…

Co-Chef & Co-Owner, Il Luogo di Aimo e Nadia
Paris, France
Fabio Pisani is an Italian chef born in 1978 in Molfetta, province of Bari, where he earned his culinary diploma. From 2000 to 2005, he trained at prestigious…

Chef
Istanbul, Turkey
Maksut Aşkar’s cooking works from Anatolian memory through the conditions of a modern Istanbul restaurant. At Neolokal in Istanbul, Turkey, where Aşkar is chef and co-owner, the…

Co-Owner and Front-of-House Director, Lido 84
Gardone Riviera, Italy
Giancarlo Camanini is Co-Owner and Front-of-House Director of Lido 84 on Lake Garda. In 2013 he left an industrial-sector career to join his brother, chef Riccardo Camanini, in…

Chef and Owner, Albi
Washington DC, Washington DC, United States
Michael Rafidi is a Palestinian-American chef and restaurateur who owns the Michelin-starred Albi in Washington, D.C.'s Navy Yard, opened in 2020, and the Levantine-inspired cafe…

Chef, Lido 84
Gardone Riviera, Italy
Contemporary Italian kitchen practice at Lido 84 in Gardone Riviera, Italy, gained Michelin recognition in 2014, with Riccardo Camanini bringing experience from Gualtiero…

Executive Chef, Villa Feltrinelli
Gargnano, Italy
Stefano Baiocco is an Italian chef born in Ancona who has been the executive chef at Villa Feltrinelli on Lake Garda since 2003, making him one of Italy's longest-serving…

Chef
Manchester, United Kingdom
## The Climb Professional kitchens shaped Tom Barnes through repetition, pressure and precision. At Trinity House, part-time kitchen work put him on the floor at service speed,…

Chef
Jerez de la Frontera, Spain
Juanlu Fernández is the chef of LÚ Cocina y Alma in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain. He is also founder and chef of LÚ Cocina y Alma. ## The Path Progress in kitchen work often shows…

Head Chef & Owner, Restaurant Horváth
Berlin, Germany
Sebastian Frank is an Austrian-born chef and head chef & owner of the 2-Michelin-starred Restaurant Horváth in Berlin's Kreuzberg district, where he has been cooking since 2010.…

Chef
Lech, Austria
## Today In Griggeler Stuba in Lech and Das Wirtshaus, Sebastian Jakob holds two head chef posts at once, a dual remit that keeps him moving between kitchens without diluting the…

Chef
Adeje, Spain
Juan Carlos Padrón León has led the kitchen at El Rincón de Juan Carlos in Adeje, Spain since 2003. The work there is built on clarity and restraint: a cuisine that asks the diner…

Executive Chef & Owner, Soigné
Seoul, South Korea
Jun Lee is the chef and owner of Soigné, a two-Michelin-starred restaurant in Seoul that he opened in 2015, blending contemporary Korean, American, and European cuisines through…

World's 50 Best Bars
Washington DC, Washington DC, United States
## The Path Kapri Robinson trained at WSET. Kapri went on to work as bartender at Founding Farmers Fishers & Bakers in Georgetown, Washington, D.C, bartender at Dirty Habit in…

Head Chef & Owner, Boragó
Santiago, Chile
## The Path Formal kitchen training at Instituto Profesional Culinary supplied the first technical frame: method, sequence, and the shared discipline of a professional kitchen.…

Chef & Proprietor, La Bastide Bruno Oger
Le Cannet, France
Bruno Oger is a two-Michelin-starred chef born on May 9, 1966, in Morbihan, Brittany, France, who discovered his passion for cooking at age 12. After training under Georges Blanc…

Chef
La Plaine-sur-Mer, France
## Coming Up At Anne de Bretagne in La Plaine-sur-Mer, France, the work sits at the point where ownership, kitchen direction, and place meet. As head chef and owner, Mathieu…

Chef
Los Angeles, California, United States
Kaiseki gives structure to season, material, and sequence. In Niki Nakayama’s work at n/naka in Los Angeles, that structure is handled through modern Japanese kaiseki: a…

Head Chef, Allium at Askham Hall
Askham, United Kingdom
Richard Swale is the Cumbrian-born head chef of Allium at Askham Hall. His career includes work with John Burton Race and Anthony Demetre, two years in France, and placements at…

Chef
Rome, Italy
## The Climb Andrea Antonini’s progression runs through kitchens where the line asks for consistency before style. As a member of the brigade at Giuda Ballerino in Rome, Italy,…
Chef, Library Bar
Toronto, Canada
Brian Tang is the chef of Library Bar at Fairmont Royal York in Toronto. His current menu reimagines the classic dishes associated with the hotel's château-style tradition while…

Chef
Newport, Rhode Island, United States
## The Climb At Cara in Newport, Jacob Jasinski has been building a kitchen around blind-tasting dinner, New England seasonality, and coastal ingredients since 2019. The work is…
Director of Beverage, Fairmont Royal York
Toronto, Canada
James Grant is Director of Beverage at Fairmont Royal York in Toronto, where he oversees the cocktail programme at Library Bar. The 2021 World Class Global Bartender of the Year…

Chef
São Paulo, Brazil
## Coming Up Training at SENAC gave Jefferson Rueda a base in discipline before the work moved outward through kitchens in São Paulo and Europe. The sequence that followed — chef…

Winemaker and Vigneron, Rippon
Wānaka, New Zealand
Rippon’s work in Wānaka, Central Otago, New Zealand, is built around site rather than correction. As winemaker and GM at Rippon, Nick Mills works from family-planted vines by Lake…

Chef, Ristorante Andrea Aprea
Milan, Italy
Andrea Aprea is an Italian chef born in Naples in 1977 to a family of Neapolitan restaurateurs, who began his career at age 15 and gained international experience in London, Kuala…

Chefkoch & Inhaber, De Nieuwe Winkel
Nijmegen, Netherlands
Emile van der Staak is the chef and owner of De Nieuwe Winkel, a two Michelin-starred restaurant in Nijmegen, Netherlands, specializing in fully plant-based botanical gastronomy.…

Chef
Vancouver, Canada
Gus Stieffenhofer-Brandson’s cooking is built around foraging-forward modern Canadian dining, regional ingredients, and a global perspective, all held in check by restraint,…
Owner, Ett Hem
Stockholm, Sweden
Jeanette Mix is the owner of Ett Hem in Stockholm. She led the careful conversion of the early-20th-century house into a hotel while retaining the atmosphere and personality of a…

Chef, Mérito
Lima, Peru
Juan Luis Martínez is a Venezuelan chef who arrived in Peru in 2014 for a stage at Central, the restaurant of Virgilio Martínez, after training in France and Spain. In 2018, he…

Chef
Wakayama, Japan
## Coming Up Training at Stella Maris, Paris, placed Junya Teshima inside a fine-dining discipline defined by repetition, control, and exacting standards before he returned to…

Chef
Paso Robles, California, United States
Her work reads as California cuisine: produce-led, restrained, and built around what is at its best in the moment. At The Restaurant at JUSTIN, that approach has helped define a…

Chef
Osaka, Japan
Yoshitaka Ishibuchi is the chef-owner of Sushi Sanshin in Osaka, where the work is defined by Edomae-style sushi and a measured pace. The counter is built around exacting detail:…

Head Chef, El Molino de Urdániz
Taipei, Taiwan
David Yárnoz is the head chef of El Molino de Urdániz, a Michelin two-starred restaurant with a Green Star located in Urdániz, Navarre, Spain, opened by his parents in 1992. He…

Chef and Owner, Aska
New York City, New York, United States
Before the work at Aska in Brooklyn, New York, the useful tension was already in place: Stockholm, Sweden, and New York as two different sets of conditions. In Fredrik Berselius’s…

Winemaker
Haro, Spain
His work is tied to Rioja identity, and Jorge Muga says it without ornament: “My focus is trying to define the identity of Rioja.” In the cellar, that means resisting novelty as…

Executive Chef & Owner, Tatiana
New York City, New York, United States
Afro-Caribbean cooking in New York carries borough memory, immigrant commerce, and family-table technique into a restaurant register. At Tatiana in New York City, Kwame Onwuachi…

Chef
Cape Town, South Africa
Cape Town gives this cooking its working register: FYN Restaurant in the city, Japanese technique used for restraint and structure, and a regional larder that runs from garden…

Chef, Ambivium
Peñafiel, Spain
Cristóbal Muñoz Ortega is the chef in charge of the kitchen at Restaurante Ambivium in Peñafiel, Valladolid, where he leads a sincere, product-driven cuisine that highlights local…

Chef
Bangkok, Thailand
## Career - **Head Chef** — ABaC Restaurant & Hotel, Barcelona, Spain - **Chef** — Restaurant Somiatruites, Igualada, Spain - **Chef** — Via Veneto, Barcelona, Spain - **Executive…

Chef
Joigny, France
In French fine dining, technique and memory can sit at the same pass. For Jean Michel Lorain, born 7 January 1959, the work at La Côte Saint Jacques in Joigny has long been…