Jeremiah Tower
retired
taped at Stars, San Francisco
In a world in which chefs have become celebrities, there are a very few who are the epicenters of real change. Jeremiah Tower is one of these seminal chefs, one of the fault lines on the culinary map. Appropriately, he has been closely connected to San Francisco.
American-born Jeremiah Tower brought a strong academic background to the field, with training in England and a master of architecture degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. But the most appropriate phrase might be ‚“present at the creation.‚” Tower was one of a handful of chefs whose passion and discipline helped make American cuisine worthy of global attention. Now, as chef-owner of Stars and proprietor of Star Team Ltd., Tower can look back over the terrain he helped discover in the early 1970s.
Tower became chef-owner of Chez Panisse, Alice Waters´ groundbreaking eatery in Berkeley. Borrowing from the robust traditions of the French bistro, this restaurant more than any other gave birth to California cuisine, thereby launching the revolution in American regional cookery. To consider the culinary world ‚“before‚” is to look at a scene in which a few large American cities had fine restaurants, and those paid homage to French cuisine. The proliferation of fine restaurants, subsequent and simultaneous growth of boutique farms, skyrocketing culinary ‚“IQ‚” of the American-on-the-street, and explosion of availability of fresh ingredients in ordinary supermarkets go back to Alice Waters, Jeremiah Tower, and patrons and other chefs who observed what careful and respectful preparation and presentation of America´s bounty of fresh foods could bring to the table.
In 1976, Jeremiah Tower conceived and prepared a California regional dinner at Chez Panisse that brought the restaurant and its chef almost overnight fame. Tower moved on eventually, opening a place called Santa Fe Bar and Grill in Berkeley and, in 1984, Stars Restaurant in San Francisco´s Civic Center area, followed by Star Team Ltd., his restaurant design, consultation, and management group, and Stars Cafe. He offered a changing menu of innovative dishes in the style he helped create: new American cuisine. His book, Jeremiah Tower´s New American Classics (HarperCollins), came out in 1986. Highlights of his career include preparing a luncheon to honor Julia Child and Robert Mondavi, founders of the American Institute of Wine and Food; appearances on several Great Chefs television series; honors from the James Beard Foundation, long lists of other honors.
Now he is retired, living in New York, writing and consulting. But there is no greater honor for this man than the shifting of plates in America´s cuisine after he shook up everything in San Francisco.
