Photo Credit: Michele Hood
Daniel Patterson is a self-taught chef well known to eaters and readers for his food, expanding Bay Area restaurant group, and writing. His fine dining Coi Restaurant (@coirestaurant) opened in 2006 in San Francisco, and won two Michelin stars in 2008. Frank Bruni of the New York Times named Coi as a top ten new restaurant outside of New York, and the San Francisco Chronicle awarded Coi four stars. Patterson opened a more casual concept called Il Cane Rosso in the Ferry Building in 2009. Plum opened in Oakland last year. On December 1st, Patterson reported on his Twitter feed that he was the soup cook "at least for a little while" for the Plum lunch debut. Bay Area Bites caught up with Patterson soon after that via phone interview.
In 1994 Patterson opened Babette's, his first restaurant, in Sonoma, at the age of 25. Soon after, Food & Wine Magazine named him "Best New Chef" in 1997 and San Francisco Focus awarded him the title of "Rising Star Chef" the same year. In 2000, Daniel opened Elisabeth Daniel in San Francisco, which was nominated "Best New Restaurant" by the James Beard Foundation in 2001. He was named "Chef of the Year" by San Francisco Magazine in 2007.
With natural perfumer Mandy Aftel (aftelier.com), he wrote "Aroma: the Magic of Essential Oils in Food and Fragrance" in 2004. His bio says that "It was the first cookbook to explain the use of essential oils in cooking and the connection of the sense of smell to emotion and memory in this context."
Patterson reported that he and his family cook at home "a lot" and that he and his wife used to go out much more often before they had a child. And yes, his young son loves to eat chicken skin. As for his food favorites, Patterson paused. "I'm not that kinda guy. I order what I'm in the mood for. It doesn't typically follow patterns."