Don't Let the Name Fool You: The Chefkateers Dinner Is the Festival's Best-Kept Secret
Two Michelin stars. A French master chef. The most interesting new kitchen in North County. Two of the world's most coveted wine labels. And a name that makes it all sound like a joke. It isn't.
If you saw a dinner called "the Chefkateers" and scrolled right past it, you're not alone. It's a goofy name.
Now here's what it's actually hiding: a chef who has held two Michelin stars at the same San Francisco restaurant for more than a decade. A French-trained master who ran one of San Diego's most famous dining rooms for more than two decades. A local chef whose brand-new Encinitas kitchen has the whole county talking. And in the glass, a Napa Cabernet producer that earned a perfect 100 points two years after it began, alongside a Burgundy house that's been in the same family since 1797.
All in one intimate room. For one night.
The name is their inside joke. The dinner is serious.
So why "Chefkateers"?
Think of the Three Musketeers, if the musketeers carried chef's knives. Suzette Gresham, Bernard Guillas and Aron Schwartz have been friends for 20 years, cooking together, traveling together and pushing each other along the way. At some point, they started calling themselves the Chefkateers, and the name stuck.
That friendship is the whole idea behind this dinner, officially titled Passion + Favorites. There's no theme to follow and no rulebook. Each chef cooks exactly what they love most: the dishes they're proudest of, the ingredients they can't stop thinking about and the wonderfully offbeat ideas that don't fit on a regular menu. Call it all for one, and one for the table.
Chef Suzette Gresham: the powerhouse
In 1989, Suzette Gresham and her longtime business partner, Giancarlo Paterlini, opened Acquerello, a refined Italian restaurant on San Francisco's Nob Hill. More than 35 years later, she's still running the kitchen.
Acquerello earned its first Michelin star when the guide arrived in the Bay Area in 2007, then a second in 2014. At the time, that put Gresham in a very small club: one of only three women chefs in the United States with two stars. She's also known as one of the industry's great teachers, the kind of chef who hands her cooks reading assignments and pays for their cookbooks.
Getting a table at Acquerello takes planning. On November 4, she's cooking in Encinitas.
Chef Bernard Guillas: the icon
If you've eaten at The Marine Room in La Jolla, you've probably tasted Bernard Guillas' cooking. He led the kitchens of the La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club, including that waves-at-the-window landmark, from 1994 for more than two decades.
Guillas grew up in Brittany, in a family where food was the family business, and began his training with celebrated French chef Georges Paineau. His career took him to South America and then to Washington, D.C., where he cooked under a former White House executive chef, before he landed in San Diego in 1989. He holds the title Maître Cuisinier de France, one of the highest honors a French chef can earn, and was inducted into the Académie Culinaire de France in 2018.
He's also traveled to more than 30 countries in search of flavors and co-authored two award-winning cookbooks. Today he cooks privately, splitting his time between Moab, Utah, and San Diego, which makes a seat at his table rarer than ever.
Chef Aron Schwartz: the one quietly changing the game
Aron Schwartz got his start as a teenage busser at Scalini's in Del Mar, showing up early to learn how to make pasta. From there he went on to the Culinary Institute of America and kitchens from Connecticut to Las Vegas before coming home to San Diego.
During his years as executive chef of the San Diego Marriott Marquis, he did something almost unheard of for a big hotel: he built the menu around local farms, buying more produce from area growers than just about any chef in the city. Later, he and his wife, Pam, a sommelier with Nobu on her résumé, co-founded Ranch 45 in Solana Beach with Eric Brandt of Brandt Beef.
This spring, the couple opened Blank Slate on Coast Highway 101 in Encinitas. It's a new kind of restaurant: a chef-driven space built around a 12-seat chef's counter, designed to be reinvented for every event, with occasional community nights that make great cooking affordable for local families. The name says it all. Every night starts fresh.
Hosting the Chefkateers here is a statement: this is where some of San Diego's most interesting cooking is happening right now.
The wines: Napa's cult star meets Burgundy royalty
The pairings are as impressive as the chefs.
DANA Estates (Napa Valley). Founded in 2005 by Hi Sang Lee, DANA takes its name from a Sanskrit word for generosity. Working with acclaimed winemaker Philippe Melka, the estate made history fast: its 2007 Lotus Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon earned a perfect 100-point score just two years after the winery was founded. DANA makes very little wine each year from its single-vineyard sites, which is why its bottles are prized by collectors and rarely seen on a dinner table.
Maison Louis Latour (Burgundy). On the other side of the world and the other end of history, Louis Latour has been family-owned and independent since 1797. Based in the village of Aloxe-Corton, the house holds more Grand Cru vineyard land in Burgundy's Côte d'Or than anyone else, and it's the largest single owner of the famous Corton-Charlemagne vineyard. Its Château Corton Grancey winery, built in 1834, is considered the first purpose-built winery in France.
New World and Old World, a young legend and a 229-year-old one, poured side by side for three chefs who never met a rule they didn't want to break.
The details
- What: Passion + Favorites: An Unconventional Dinner by the Chefkateers
- When: Wednesday, November 4. Reception at 6:30 p.m., dinner at 7 p.m.
- Where: Blank Slate, 101 N. Coast Highway 101, Encinitas
- Tickets: Reserve through Toast
The room is small, the chefs are legendary and the wine list is the stuff collectors dream about. Don't let a funny name keep you from the best table of the week. One night only.
