When Jeremiah Tower started cooking in California in the 1970s, fine food in America was typically a pale imitation of French haute cuisine. Taking the reins at a small Berkeley restaurant named Chez Panisse, Tower looked around at the extraordinary fresh ingredients available from local producers, began experimenting with a cooking style that emphasized pure flavors and inventive combinations...and changed the face of American cooking. In a few years, he went on to open San Francisco's glittering Stars restaurant, becoming this country's first celebrity chef and winning two James Beard Foundation awards, including one for best chef in the U.S. Without debate, Tower is one of the country's greatest cooks. In this extraordinary new cookbook, he presents over 250 recipes representing the last fifteen years of his creative cooking. More than a cookbook, however, Jeremiah Tower Cooks reveals Tower's extraordinary gift as a writer and storyteller. The result is a book of exceptional delights from a marvelous writer and a brilliant cook.
BIOGRAPHY OF JEREMIAH TOWER
February 2010
Jeremiah Tower was born in the United States, educated in Australia, England, France and the United States, and is now an acclaimed authority on food and restaurant hospitality.
He began his culinary career in 1972-1978 as co-owner and executive chef of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California. After the Balboa Café in Francisco, the Santa Fe Bar & Grill in Berkeley, and Ventana in Big Sur from 1978-1984, Jeremiah opened and owned several other successful and highly acclaimed restaurants in San Francisco (Stars, Stars Café, Speedo 690), Hong Kong (The Peak Café), Singapore (Stars) and Seattle (Stars).
Jeremiah sold the Stars restaurants to an Asian group in 1998.
Tower then moved to New York to pursue new projects. After four books and 26 shows for a PBS series, he moved to Italy and Mexico to SCUBA dive and research material for further books.
Jeremiah has written several cookbooks, starting in 1980 as assistant and sometimes co-author with Richard Olney of the Time Life Books' thirty volumes of The Good Cook. In 1986 he published the very successful and James Beard Foundation winner Jeremiah Tower's New American Classics (Harper & Row). In 1995 he contributed to The Artist's Table for the National Gallery of Art. His cookbook, Jeremiah Tower Cooks, was published by Stewart Tabori & Chang in the fall of 2002, and reprinted in June, 2003 and received national press as well as "best cookbook of the year" from Australian Vogue Entertaining. California Dish, a book on the history of the American dining revolution that started in California, was released by Simon & Schuster in 2003 and in 2004 as a paperback. America's Best Chefs with Jeremiah Tower, the companion book for Tower's 26 shows on PBS, was released by John Wiley & sons also in 2003. He then revised and edited Henri-Paul Pellaprat's (for years head of the Cordon Bleu school in Paris) 800-recipe and masterpiece cookbook of classic French cuisine, which was released by Vendome Press in late 2003 as The Great Book of French Cuisine. Also published in late 2003 was his chapter for David and Jean Halberstam's Defining a Nation for Tehabi Press and the National Geographic, and Cooking the Costco Way, for which Jeremiah was the consultant for the California chapter. He has also written several articles for magazines, as well as restaurant guides for London, Paris, New York and San Francisco, and was featured in the 2001 Christmas cover story for Food & Wine. From 2000 to 2004 he was a weekly columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, and contributed to The Financial Times Weekend. In that period he also wrote Forwards for The Complete Book of Outdoor Cookery, by James Beard, The Farallon Cookbook, by Mark Franz, Stars Desserts (with Stars' pastry chef Emily Luchetti) and the cookbook from Arrows restaurant in Maine.
He has been featured in the Wine Spectator and in The New York Times by Julia Reed.
Tower appeared in the PBS series Julia Child's "Cooking with Master Chefs" and its companion book. He has been featured in other books such as those produced by Tiffany and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as appearing in many other cookbooks, books on the history of food as well as on culinary commentary, most notably Patric Kuh's The Last Days of Haute Cuisine: America's Culinary Revolution, and the very successful books by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page. He has been a guest on national and local television programs, and has appeared on "Good Morning America" (ABC) and "CBS This Morning," as well as the Regis show and "The Late Show with David Letterman," and has appeared also on the "Ken Hom Cooking Show" for the B.B.C. He was the star and host of a television series launched in April 2002 on PBS called "America's Best Chefs" that featured twenty-six half hour shows spotlighting the James Beard Foundation Awards' "Best Regional Chefs in America."
Since the 1980's Tower has promoted New American Cuisine with teaching engagements at culinary academies (C.C.A. and C.I.A), cooking expositions and classes in the United States (Epcot International Food & Wine Festival), France, Germany (airline catering conference keynote speaker), Australia (VIN International, and Gourmet Traveler's "Restaurant of the Year" judge), Japan, Hong Kong and other S.E Asian countries, and most recently as a panelist at the New Orleans Writers Conference where his cookbook was one of the best sellers, and as a speaker on 'Diversity' at the prestigious Santa Fe Institute.
He is or has been a member of various food & wine societies, including La Chaine de Rotisseurs, Chevalier de Tastevin, 'LOrdre de Coteaux de Champagne, a Friend of the Widow, The American Institute of Wine and Food (co-founder), The James Beard Foundation, and The International Wine & Food Society.
Other than the James Beard Foundation's award for "Outstanding Chef in America" in 1996, other awards include the 1991 induction into the Nation's Restaurant News Fine Dining Hall of Fame, the 1993 Regional Best Chef California by the James Beard Foundation, the prestigious James Beard Foundations' "Who's Who in America," as well as the 1994 USA "Chef of the Year" by Chefs in America.
Jeremiah has lived and traveled over most of the world, and has been involved in consulting and with wine and food promotions in Canada (Hotel Vancouver), Australia, France, Italy, Hong Kong, Singapore, Germany, Japan and England, and has had national publicity in all of them.
Tower currently lives in Mexico and Italy, working on a two new books and articles for U.S. culinary magazines like Food Arts, as well as buying, restoring, and selling old colonial houses in Merida and working on a major land development at Chichen Itza, both in the Yucatan.
