Nick Cobarruvias wasn’t supposed to be a chef. At 19, he was double-majoring in philosophy and government at the University of Texas at Austin while prepping to take the LSAT. But the need for cash led him to a job washing dishes in a restaurant kitchen, and by 22, he’d given up on law school. He arrived in San Francisco in 2003 with three duffle bags and a plan: graduate from California Culinary Academy and work his way up the city’s restaurant ranks.
After cooking his way through top restaurants, including Traci Des Jardins’ Jardinière and Marlowe in SoMa, he and his wife opened Son’s Addition on the Mission’s 24th Street corridor in 2017. In 2021, they added Otra in the Lower Haight. After years of cooking French-inflected cuisine, Cobarruvias saw his sophomore effort as a chance to apply his classic culinary training to food inspired by his Mexican American heritage and Texas upbringing.
Otra celebrates its fourth anniversary in May — but it isn’t quite what Cobarruvias envisioned. Service is more casual; the menu, simpler. He’s proud of the food, which is executed by a team of “badass” cooks, most of whom are women, new to the country, and undeniably talented. But they are not trained chefs.
Contrary to when he opened Son’s Addition, it’s so difficult to find back-of-house workers with professional experience that Cobarruvias has all but given up. Instead, he relies on a delicate balance of new-to-the-industry staff, whom he trains on the job, and precious few seasoned employees. In an industry notorious for thin margins, he can’t afford to hire a full roster of industry pros, whose scarcity allows them to command six-figure salaries. “There are really good, talented cooks — hungry and hardworking,” he says. “But there’s this middle that’s just not there.”
Whereas in 2019 the Bay Area claimed 57 Michelin-starred restaurants, there are now 30.
One primary reason for that missing middle, according to industry veterans, is the closure in the last decade of several of the Bay Area’s premier cooking schools, which once churned out hundreds of trained chefs every year. Of the handful that once operated in the Bay Area — including California Culinary Academy, San Francisco Cooking School, and the International Culinary Center in Campbell — only one remains: the culinary arts program at City College of San Francisco.
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The loss of training programs would hurt any city’s restaurant industry, but it has been particularly harmful to San Francisco, which has an abundance of upscale and fine-dining establishments led by chef-owners who set out to execute a specific vision. The deficit of trained cooks is also a symptom of San Francisco’s waning reputation as a fine-dining powerhouse: Whereas in 2019 the Bay Area claimed 57 Michelin-starred restaurants, there are now 30.
For owners with aspirations of a coveted Michelin star, “it’s hard to be ambitious when you don’t have people who are familiar with methods and products,” says Jodi Liano, who operated the San Francisco Cooking School from 2012 until its closing in 2022. “And you probably don’t have the bandwidth to train people when you’re just trying to get through service.”
‘Everyone had fire in them’
For decades, a steady flow of aspiring cooks moved to San Francisco to pursue their culinary dreams. Some, like Cobarruvias, came to learn the basics at a Bay Area culinary school. Others had mastered their knife skills and mother sauces and came with hopes of landing a job at one of the region’s dozens of Michelin Guide-listed restaurants.
The latter group includes Adam Rosenblum. He came to San Francisco in 2013 after graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. He lined up a stage, the restaurant equivalent of an internship, and landed a job at Michelin-recognized pasta and pizza destination Flour + Water. Though he’d spent years working in professional kitchens in New Orleans and New Jersey, it was culture shock in the best way. “I was put into an environment full of wildly talented people,” Rosenblum says. “Even the entry-level line cook was so driven. Everyone had fire in them.”
Today, he owns Causwells, a Marina District staple for more than a decade, plus cocktail bar Lilah a few doors down. He says the lack of trained cooks means kitchens feel different than when he arrived in San Francisco all those years ago. “There is definitely a gap,” he says. “We’re promoting people because we have to, because we don’t want to lose them, and they show some promise. But not very many people are teaching them how to manage people and how to create and maintain a culture, and that’s really what makes a sous chef. The cooking part is easy.”
Most professional cooks and chefs agree you don’t need a culinary education to make it in the restaurant industry. But Liano says it’s not just knowing how to julienne a carrot that gives graduates an edge. “Those people tended to move through the ranks a little bit faster,” Liano says. “Not necessarily because they could filet a fish better than the next person, but because they had a set of work habits.”
Before its 10-year run ended, SF Cooking School graduated some 75 students a year, about half of whom came from outside the Bay Area. Students could choose between a six-month or yearlong program, both of which would prepare them for a career as a restaurant cook, baker, caterer, or food photographer. Her goal wasn’t to just teach students how to properly emulsify a salad dressing but to prepare them to handle themselves in a professional kitchen. “I would love it if they knew how to not be a menace to the line,” Liano says.
‘The kitchen culture is shifting so much. That grind-hard kitchen mentality has changed.’
— Jennifer Rudd, chair of CCSF’s culinary arts and hospitality studies department
Jennifer Rudd, chair of CCSF’s culinary arts and hospitality studies department, says graduates who want to find work in a restaurant kitchen almost always do. The program’s 40 or so graduates each year find their way into some of the Bay Area’s best-regarded kitchens, such as Nopa and Nopalito; Michelin-starred The Progress, State Bird Provisions, and Californios; Jane the Bakery; and small-batch fermentation producer Shared Cultures. But the demand for people with a two-year degree in culinary arts management — the CCSF program that teaches restaurant kitchen skills and experience in the front of the house — far outpaces supply.
It’s not just a lack of trained cooks that’s making it harder for owners and chefs to hire, Rudd says. After being laid off during the pandemic, many restaurant workers left the industry for good. According to census data, San Francisco saw a 55% drop in the number of people working in food service and handling between 2019 and 2022.
For those who remained or have joined since then, the idea of spending years moving laterally around the city’s top restaurants isn’t as appealing as it once was. The allure of working in a Michelin-starred kitchen for low wages has lost its luster. “Folks are like, ‘No, you gotta pay me for my work,’” Rudd says. “The kitchen culture is shifting so much. That grind-hard kitchen mentality has changed.”
‘You have to be more hands on’
After graduating from CIA in Hyde Park, chef David Yoshimura “followed the stars” to San Francisco, where he staged at a handful of the city’s best restaurants before landing a job at two-Michelin-starred Californios. In 2021, he opened Michelin-starred Nisei, where elegant multicourse tasting menus showcase rice from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and U.S.-raised unagi.
He’s looking to hire a sous chef to join his eight-person kitchen team, but it’s been a struggle to fill a role that doesn’t come with a six-figure salary. “Before the pandemic, it felt like every restaurant had three sous chefs or five sous chefs,” Yoshimura says. “You could just put a bunch of talented sous chefs in a restaurant, and they just run it for you. Now it kind of feels like the opposite.”
Still, he’s not without hope. A solution to the problem will simply require more training and mentorship in kitchens like his. “You have to be more hands-on,” he says. “It just means I have to be there every single day.”
James Yeun Leong Parry knows firsthand what a chef can achieve by investing in a team of cooks who may not come with extensive experience. After cooking at Michelin-starred restaurants — including Benu in San Francisco and Bo Innovation and Ryugin in Hong Kong — he spent several years as executive chef of Palette Tea House, a high-volume but elegant dim sum restaurant at Ghirardelli Square. “I think the biggest adjustment for me was working with a very different range of backgrounds and restaurant experience,” Parry says. “It made me realize that not everyone is striving for the stars. They have different skill sets. They have different reasons for working.”
In a few months, he plans to open his first restaurant, The Happy Crane, in Hayes Valley, where he’ll slow-roast ducks and fold delicate dumplings stuffed with scallop mousse as part of an ambitious modern Chinese menu. As he interviews candidates for all the jobs he has to fill, he’s looking beyond restaurant experience.
“For me, it’s all about attitude,” he says. “Chefs like me, we need young, hungry, passionate chefs. It’s almost like a reminder of how we started out.”