JEREMIAH TOWER: BIOGRAPHY & CAREER
October, 2016
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. Featured in the TV series The Great Chefs of San Francisco. 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.Awarded one of “ten best culinary memoirs” in 2013. 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. In 2004 Tower wrote the Foreword to James Villas’ Stalking the Green Fairy. 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.
In 2013 Tower launched his new book, Escoffier, on Kindle for Amazon. He currently lives in Cozumel Mexico for its SCUBA diving, as well as in Merida while writing books. ; and finishing Apricocks & Other Aphrodisiacs with the artist Jorge Pardo for Taschen publishing.
Tower is also on the advisory board of the online campus of the Escoffier School of Culinary Arts; is working with “Cook it Raw” Yucatan (just finished the first of four segments); developing a business plan for a farm restaurant and new-style lodging on 80 acres on Orcas island; and working with a team in Guatemala and Mexico on a project called “Farmer’s Kitchen.”
2014-2015
• Speaker at the MAD conference with chef and owner René Redzepi of the restaurant Noma (constant winner of the “best restaurant in the world”) in Copenhagen.
• Guest of honor at the Imbibe and Inspire conference “The Roots of American Food” in Chicago, September 2014
• Interview in Mexico with Associated Press
• Re-opening of the SoFAB museum in New Orleans in late September, 2014.
2016
• April - Tribeca Film Festival premier in of the CNN original The Last Magnificent by Anthony Bourdain and Zero Point Zero productions. The 100-minute film was bought by The Orchard for distribution in 15 major theater markets in 2017.
• Top Chef guest of honor, Mexico episode
• Featured with Table Manners, Jarry Magazine
• October - Mill Valley Film Festival,
• October -Blenheim Palace Film Festival (UK), The Last Magnificent.
• October - Oxford Brooks University (UK) Ken Hom Lecture Series presentation of Table Manners and The Last Magnificent.
• October - Publication of Table Manners: How to Behave in the Modern World and Why, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York.
• Creation of website Jeremiahtowerconsulting.com.
2017
• January - A new edition of the James Beard award winner 1986 cookbook Jeremiah Tower’s New American Classics with new material and all new photographs.
• March – Publication of Start the Fire by Harper Collins, an Anthony Bourdain selection for Ecco Press. A completely new and expanded edition of California Dish (Grubb Street’s 2014 “Great Books: The Top 25 Must-Read Food Memoirs of All Time,” included with Julia Child, A.J. Liebling, and M.F.K. Fisher).
• April – “Fifteen major market” US theater release of The Last Magnificent.
• Fall – CNN distribution and Netflix listing for The Last Magnificent.
CAREER
JEREMIAH TOWER CONSULTING, New York, Merida & Cozumel, Mexico
President, 100% owner, 1978-2016
Production of cookbooks, TV shows, hospitality consulting, lecturing, teaching, and development of culinary programs for hotels and restaurants worldwide. Buying, restoring, and selling old colonial houses in Merida’s historic center. Sourcing and growing food ingredients in Mexico and the Yucatan for the U.S.
THE PEAK CAFÉ
Co-owner, designer, executive chef and beverage manager
Hong Kong, 1990
Fabulously successful design and food at the top of the Peak in HK.
TWINKLE, INC., San Francisco, California
Chairman & President, 100% owner, 1983-1998
Ownership and management of restaurants and cafes in the U.S. and Asia, specifically the Stars group. Palo Alto, Seattle, Singapore, Manila
SANTA FE BAR & GRILL INC., Berkeley, California
President, 50% owner, 1982-1985
Ownership and management of this bar & grill. The restaurant that started the “Bar & Grill” movement in the U.S. in the 1980’s.
BALBOA CAFÉ
Executive chef and bar consultant
Consultant chef responsible for this San Francisco landmark’s turn around to its present success.
CALIFORNIA CULINARY ACADEMY, San Francisco, California
Professor, 1980-1982
Revised the existing culinary program and developed a completely new program to include an on-premise restaurant.
TIME-LIFE, London, England and Arlington, Virginia
Chef, writer, book designer, 1978-1980
Co-wrote and developed The Good Cook series for Time-Life first with Richard Olney in London, and then did the U.S. adaptations in Arlington, Virginia also for Time-Life.
VENTANA RESTAURANT, BIG SUR
1979 – 1980 Executive chef and consultant
CHEZ PANISSE – PAGNOL ET CIE., Berkeley, California
Executive chef, Co-owner, 1972-1978
Developed Chez Panisse from a local café into what James Beard called the “best little restaurant in America.”
EDUCATION
HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF DESIGN, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Master of Architecture, June 1972
HARVARD COLLEGE, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Bachelor of Arts, June 1965
Honors Department of History & Literature
LOOMIS SCHOOL, Windsor, Connecticut
Prep school, 1959-1961
KINGS’ COLLEGE SCHOOL, London, England
“Public” school, completed 1959
CAMPION HALL, St. Ignatius College, Sydney, Australia
Private prep school, 1948-1951
LANGUAGES
English, French, Spanish, some Italian
DEGREES
BA
M.Arch
Honorary Masters, Culinary Institute of America.
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