San Francisco Chronicle
2005 RISING STAR CHEFS
This year's group excels at marrying flavors, cultures -- and even one another
by Michael Bauer
January 30, 2005
What gives a chef the edge to excel?
Primarily it's passion, but beyond that the paths to the top are varied, as illustrated by this year's selection of The San Francisco Chronicle's Rising Star chefs.
We've been choosing the chefs to watch for more than a decade; many of our past stars, including Michael Mina, Traci Des Jardins and Gary Danko, have developed a national following. We predict this year's batch won't be an exception.
Three of this year's chefs started out as artists and gravitated toward cooking because it allowed them to express their creative side in a different way. Three went directly from school into culinary training, knowing all along that cooking was their future.
Half of this year's group started their professional lives on the East Coast, but were drawn to the West Coast because they felt that no other part of the country gave them the tools -- or the appreciative audiences -- to perfect their craft.
Their exuberance and creative takes on cooking -- as shown in the signature recipes accompanying each profile -- will ensure that the future of the Bay Area's dining scene will continue to be bright.
Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski
by Carol Ness
Name: Stuart Brioza
Age: 30
Restaurant: Rubicon, San Francisco
Style: California and European regional
Recipe: Caramelized Garlic Soup With Dungeness Crab & Fennel
Quote: "My style is still totally in the making. If I was to say, 'This is it,' I'd be lying through my teeth. It doesn't change, but it's refined on a constant basis.''
Name: Nicole Krasinski
Age: 28
Restaurant: Rubicon, San Francisco
Style: Light and seasonal, with sweetness offset by acidic, herbal and savory touches.
Recipe: Ricotta Crepes With Buttery Apple Broth & Apple Butter
Quote: "I've never been into sweets; growing up I never had junk food or sweetened cereal. I try to develop desserts that I would like, that are very well balanced -- putting sea salt on ice cream or putting cheese in it somewhere.''
If Hollywood wrote the story of Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski, the two young chefs would meet in a steamy restaurant kitchen, electricity leaping like the flames under saute pans.
Reality, as usual, makes a better tale. This Bay Area-raised couple met six years ago in a photo darkroom at De Anza College. At heart, they're artists, and their medium is food.
That shows from top to bottom of the menu at Rubicon, the wine-driven restaurant in San Francisco's Financial District where Brioza is executive chef and Krasinski is pastry chef. They took over in April.
Brioza's savory courses segue seamlessly into Krasinski's sweet ones. His halibut is skewered on a cinnamon stick, with a hint of honey to bring up the spice, oxtails for richness and dried cherries to deliver a punch of acid. Her plate of Gorgonzola with aged balsamic ice cream and a walnut tart is a natural follow-up, with its own balance of flavors and sensations.
They riff off each other, push each other, taste each other's creations and push some more.
"We're definitely a team, but we have our separate kitchens," says Krasinski, 28. "We work together very intensely on developing the menu so it's sensible from start to finish."
"Sensible" isn't a word you often hear from young chefs. But they both use it, and they mean food that makes sense.
Brioza, 30, has already spent half his life in the kitchen. He grew up in Cupertino and Danville, and when he was a high school kid, just 15, he worked in a pasta restaurant because he needed a job. He started out cleaning, but soon was whipping up tortellini and sauces.
Pretty soon he started pestering the new chef at the nearby Blackhawk Grille for a job. At first, the chef laughed; then he put Brioza to work alongside a kitchen staff of 20, some fresh from kitchens like Fleur de Lys.
After a year in Utah, snowboarding during the day and cooking at night, it was time for De Anza, time "to get serious about something."
"Something" turned out to be fellow De Anza art student Krasinski. She says it was darkroom love at first sight. He says, "Did she tell you I had to woo her for six months?"
Brioza says that when it came to cooking, "I can't really state a time where I said I want to do this for the rest of my life." Instead, he just kept doing it. "I didn't question it."
He and Krasinski started eating seriously, dressing up in their Doc Martens for what she says was her first fine dining experience, at the Gotham Bar & Grill in New York. Later, they would eat their way through the boulangeries and markets of Europe.
Brioza set off for the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. During a CIA internship with Paul Hogan at the Park Avenue Cafe in Chicago, he says, he got serious about cooking, inhaling gastronomical books and later opening Savarin for Hogan in Chicago.
From there, Brioza landed the top job at what he calls "the restaurant at the end of the world" -- Tapawingo, which has made a name for itself in a farm town of 400 in northern Michigan.
Through 3 1/2 years there, he developed his own style, based in classic European regional cooking but adapted to local markets and palates. It's seasonal, but not cookie-cutter seasonal, he says.
Duck with prunes and turnips, for example, is a classic Rhone dish that Brioza uses as a starting point for a winter dish at Rubicon, maintaining the same play of flavors to build a squab dish with prunes, olives, cured lemon, polenta and cauliflower.
Tapawingo taught him the values of a tight-knit farm community, and the extraordinary flavors of local fruits and vegetables grown in frosty climates.
Tapawingo is also where he attracted national attention; Food & Wine magazine named him one of its top young chefs of 2003.
He was ready for San Francisco. And by now, so was Krasinski.
When she met Brioza, she was an art student with a lifelong obsession with bread.
"I was always baking something growing up" in Los Gatos, says Krasinski, whose family still lives there.
When Brioza went off to the CIA, Krasinski stayed in the Bay Area. But they reunited when he landed the cooking gig in Chicago and she got into the Art Institute there.
Arriving a few months before classes started, Krasinski found a summer job at Red Hen Bread, a new bakery just down the street from their Wicker Park apartment. There she learned how to develop flavors, crust colors and textures in breads, and how to make scones and croissants. By August, she was hooked, and art school was permanently deferred.
"I knew I couldn't put my full passion into both," Krasinski says.
When Tapawingo came calling Brioza, she scored the job of assistant pastry chef, moving up to pastry chef before her second summer season.
"I try to develop desserts that I would eat, that are balanced and not heavy," she says. "People have already eaten three or four courses, so I don't want big -- I try to do things that are more delicate."
For Rubicon's winter menu, she's made an airy frozen pistachio and cherry nougat glace, which floats in a tart citrus soup with mango and pomegranate.
"It's very light and refreshing -- like, did I just have dessert?" she says.
Brioza and Krasinski left Tapawingo after the 2003 summer season and headed for San Francisco. They didn't have jobs, but wanted what the big city could provide: a long-term home, new challenges and a trained staff that didn't leave when winter set in.
Rubicon was looking for a chef, and Team Brioza-Krasinski started in April. Eventually, they dream about a restaurant of their own.
"My own idea,'' Brioza says, "is to find our own Tapawingo," hopefully in San Francisco.