About the Actor
An honors graduate of the California Culinary Academy, Chef MikeC. is one of the Bay Area s most popular instructors. After beginning his professional career in the mid-1990s in upstate New York and moving to San Francisco in 2001 to study at CCA, MikeC. co-founded Xfusion Personal Chef Services - one of the originators of the concept of turning private parties into exciting cooking events for guests to participate in. While still in school, he was also hired to co-manage and teach at Sur La Table's San Francisco culinary school. Within months, MikeC. was put in charge of the program, which included assisting such visiting celebrity chefs as Martin Yan, Jamie Oliver, Alton Brown and Michael Chiarello. In 2003, he founded Party Lifestyles and taught international cuisines at cooking schools and retail outlets up and down the West Coast. At the same time, he became the official spokesperson for Furi Knives, appearing at trade shows and culinary fairs around the country to demonstrate proper knife skills. Over the years, MikeC. has led countless corporate team building cooking events for such companies as GAP, Yahoo, Microsoft, Adobe, GE Capitol, and Charles Schwab. Born and raised in France, Chef Olivier Said is the descendant of at least five generations of restaurateurs in France, dating back to the early 1800s. After beginning his career at the age of 15 in his mother s Paris restaurant, he moved to Los Angeles in the early 1980s, and worked at Ken Frank's LaToque, one the first restaurants in the country to feature California nouvelle cuisine. In 1987, Said returned to Paris and opened his own restaurant, the popular Texas Coyote, which included three sprawling bars and a night club. After returning to the States in the late 1990s, he joined the management team at Berkeley's César Tapas Bar, founded by three Chez Panisse alumni. Said has co-authored two notable cookbooks: CÉSAR: Recipes from a Tapas Bar (named one of the year s Ten Best by Food and Wine magazine in 2003) and THE BAR: A Spirited Guide to Cocktail Alchemy. He also writes a regular column for Trump magazine.
