NANCY SILVERTON
Nancy Silverton, the celebrated chef and co-owner of acclaimed Los Angeles restaurant group Mozza, became the first pastry chef to win the James Beard Foundation Outstanding Chef award. I interviewed her for The Caterer about a career spanning more than 35 years
Winning the James Beard Foundation’s Outstanding Chef of the Year award in the USA is much like winning the Chef Catey in the UK. It’s a big deal. The award grants the recipient entry into a very elite club reserved only for those chefs who have truly made a lasting impact on their country’s culinary industry. So it’s refreshing to see that Nancy Silverton, chef and co-owner of the acclaimed Los Angeles restaurant group Mozza, takes winning this prestigious award with a pinch of salt. “It’s funny because it’s not like the Olympics where you can really measure somebody’s performance. Sometimes I think it’s really arbitrary,” she says. “It is wonderful to have won, of course. But it’s not like it has gone to my head or I thought: ‘Yes! Now I have finally made it.’ I have been in this business for a very long time and I think that’s probably part of why I won it.”
With a career spanning more than 35 years, Silverton is only the fourth woman in the 25-year history of the James Beard Foundation Awards to win Outstanding Chef - the others were Alice Waters (1992), Lidia Bastianich (2002) and Judy Rodgers (2004) - but this achievement doesn’t seem to faze her too much either. “Of course it’s great but when you take it into consideration, there just are less women who are running kitchens than there are men,” she insists. “What’s more interesting is that I am the first pastry chef to win it. Awards are not generally given to pastry chefs. Even in a large restaurant with a pastry department, those who run it are very rarely recognized.” As far as pastry is concerned, Silverton is widely considered the doyen of her craft in the USA today. Through her now iconic Campanile Restaurant and La Brea Bakery, which first opened in Los Angeles in 1989, she helped redefine the culture of bread baking in the country, leading her to win the inaugural James Beard Foundation’s Pastry Chef of the Year award in 1990. This year, La Brea, which Silverton sold in 2001 remaining a consultant, celebrates its 25th anniversary and is one of the USA's largest sellers of fresh bread supplying grocery stores and restaurants nationwide. Silverton has published numerous books over the years and now runs the successful Mozza group of restaurants together with partners acclaimed New York restaurateur Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich, with outlets in California and Singapore.
But being a pastry chef wasn’t always Silverton’s chosen profession. After deciding to drop out of college to pursue a career in restaurants, she went to London to study at Le Cordon Bleu in 1977, which initially put her off her now beloved craft. “It was very different back then,” she recalls. “Ingredients weren’t great: a lot of stuff was frozen, a lot of stuff came from a can, nothing was seasonal or fresh and it was all about the technique. “I didn’t do very well there and my worst subject was always pastry and they were kind of instrumental in my initial dislike of that part of the kitchen. They were so strict and every time I would question things - do I really have to put seven eggs in this, what if it’s too eggy? - I was always met with a stern ‘No!’ Pastry really scared me at first because there seemed to be no room for variation.”
Returning to Los Angeles, Silverton was hell-bent on working at Michael McCarty's acclaimed Santa Monica restaurant Michael’s but to her dismay the only position available was as assistant pastry chef. In the hope of being moved, she took the job but under the tutelage of Jimmy Brinkeley discovered that pastry didn’t have to be boring. “I was sold,” she beams thinking back. “I was so lucky to work with such a young, genius pastry chef, who hardly ever measured anything. We made all these fun, interesting desserts and it was a real turning point for me.” In 1980, Silverton decided to really embrace pastry and went to France to study at the Lenôtre Culinary Institute, run by famous French pastry chef Gaston Lenôtre, to hone her skills. Upon returning to LA, she helped Wolfgang Puck to open Spago as executive pastry chef. “Spago had such a big national presence,” she says. “Everyone was talking about it. At that time LA was the place for restaurants.”
After working at Spago for a few years and a short stint in New York, Silverton opened her La Brea Bakery and Campanile Restaurant adjacent to each other in six-month succession in 1989 together with ex-husband Mark Peel and partner Manfred Krankl. “It was a lot of juggling and looking back, there were a lot of hard times,” she recalls. “I would work at the bakery from midnight to 8am, then sleep for three hours, work a little, nap a little, go back to do desserts at Campanile - it was crazy.” But the hard work paid off and both the bakery and the restaurant became LA institutions for years to come.
Inspired by a lack of authentic artisan bread in the USA, Silverton began teaching herself the art of sourdough bread baking. She developed a baguette, rosemary olive oil loaf, olive bread, country white, whole wheat and dark Normandy rye. “There really wasn’t much going on with bakeries at that time. There were a handful in San Francisco and New York but that was it,” she says. Two years after opening, Silverton moved the bakery to a much larger, fully staffed, commercial site and split it off as a business separate from Campanile. “It became clear that the bakery could really be something,” she says. “My partner had the foresight to separate the two businesses because we knew one day someone would want to buy it.” That day came in 2001, when La Brea was sold to investors in a deal that has been variously quoted as anywhere from $56m to $68.5m.
Silverton continued to work at Campanile until 2005, when she split from ex-husband Mark Peel. Two years later she opened Mozza. The inspiration for Mozza was a lunch she served to famous San Francisco chef Jeremiah Tower, who told her about Òbikà, the mozzarella bar from Rome. “I knew that’s what I wanted to do back in LA: find a tiny little space and run a mozzarella bar where I’ll do everything myself.”
Backed by Batali, who, although he had long rejected the prospect of investing in a restaurant in Los Angeles, where ‘nobody eats after 9pm and everyone’s on a diet’, loved Silverton’s idea and immediately came onboard. Looking for the perfect site they found one that happened to have a pizzeria attached to it. And so the idea of opening a pizzeria as well as a mozzarella bar was born. “We immediately split all of our ideas. In the pizzeria, it’s all about the pizza. We have salads and antipasti but they’re on the side. In the Osteria, it’s more about the pasta. We have a very traditional way of looking at this. Pasta is done so poorly in this country so we really want to be as close to Italy as we can.”
The menu includes the likes of garganelli with ragu bolognese; ricotta and egg raviolo with browned butter; corzetti stampati with eggplant, olives and fresh ricotta; orecchiette with sausage and Swiss chard; and tagliatelle with oxtail ragu. Then there’s the mozzarella: Burrata is served with Tsar Nicoulai Caviar; with leeks and fett’unta; braised artichokes, pine nuts, currants and mint pesto; or with bacon marinated escarole and caramelized shallots. Bufala Mozzarella comes smoked with prosciutto di Parma; or with pesto, salsa romesco, tapenade and caperberry relish; or jumbo asparagus, sieved egg and bottarga. “My way of cooking has never really changed. I have always been very interested in fresh, seasonal ingredients and I have never been interested in manipulating food or cooking with toys,” Silverton says. My philosophy is that when you compose a dish is you have to have the ability to edit it. I’ve always been an editor and I know intuitively when a dish is lacking or when the lily is being gilded. You’ve got to have that balance.
Silverton’s pizza meanwhile is widely considered some of the best in California. “It’s not Neapolitan, nor is it Chicago or New York style. It’s a mix between the pizza bianca sold around Campo de’ Fiori in Rome and (Phoenix pizza chef) Chris Bianco’s pizza,” she explains. The dough, which rests 36 hours before being used, includes some rye flour and some malt resulting in a crust that is both spongy and softly chewy inside with a crispy crunch on the outside. Pizzeria Mozza has since expanded to Newport Beach and San Diego, while internationally, the Mozza trio opened an osteria and pizzeria at the 2,500-room Marina Bay Sands hotel in Singapore in 2010. “We are planning on opening a few more osteria/pizzeria restaurants in Asia,” Silverton reveals.
After more than three decades in the industry, which have seen her enjoy such a varied career, how does Silverton continue to be inspired? “The world of food really inspires me. Whether it’s an ingredient or something I eat,” she insists. “But my way of cooking has never really changed,” she adds. “I have always been very interested in fresh, seasonal ingredients. I have never been interested in manipulating food or cooking with toys. My philosophy is that when you compose a dish is you have to have the ability to edit it. I’ve always been an editor and I know intuitively when a dish is lacking or when the lily is being gilded. You’ve got to have that balance.”
