David Schlosser

The chef, David Schlosser, at downtown Los Angeles’ Shibumi restaurant grew up in Santa Monica in a family without any cooks. He never went to any Japanese restaurants. His very Jewish American dad, a dentist, took the family out for Chinese food on Christmas. But not having many Asian friends growing up back in the 70’s and 80’s on LA’s West Side, this was the pretty much the extent of David’s exposure to any Asian cuisine. With food in David’s house, in general, dining wasn’t aspirational. David grew up eating canned beets and beans. David didn’t even try lobster until he was eighteen. Back in 1995, David started working in restaurant kitchens while a student at Santa Monica Community College. He worked part time at 72 Market Street owned by Dudley Moore which, at that time, was a very “hot” super hip French restaurant in Venice in the 1980’s and 1990’s. David worked in the basement kitchen, not the restaurant kitchen, prepping with Latinos new to this country who spoke zero English. He broke down lettuces, ducks and chickens as well as cleaned and scrubbed. Despite not speaking any Spanish, at that time, David completely loved this work environment. When September came around, which meant going back to school full time, David told his mom that he didn’t want to go back to school. He’d rather stay working in the restaurant kitchen. So David asked the chef at 72 Market Street if he could stay, and the chef said absolutely David could stay. After three months, the chef gave David a full time position. After another three months, David moved to the upstairs restaurant kitchen where he fell even more in love with his kitchen work environment. David was in this kitchen for a year where he worked his way up from lowest position to prepping for lunch, making salads, shucking oysters and butchering fish. He was always a day-time guy, but he made it upstairs so he was proud of himself especially since he was only nineteen

David ended up leaving this job to go to the Culinary Institute of America, the CIA, in Hyde Park, New York considered by many the top culinary school in the United States. According to David, the chefs that are mentors at this two year program were incredible. So this was an amazing experience for David. He did an internship in NYC and worked at a few famous places by David Burke and Charlie Palmer, who were on their way up at that time in the 1990’s, while still in school. When he graduated school, he was the only person in his class to get a job in a three starred Michelin restaurant. This first job after graduation was in the south of France at a restaurant called Georges Blanc. The chef was monsieur Georges Blanc. This restaurant was spectacular with twenty seven chefs in the kitchen serving only fifty covers a night: A temple of fine cuisine. When David started he spoke zero French except for a few words like poulet. But he picked the language up very quickly. He felt honored to be there. The other cooks and chefs treated him well because they all saw how fast and hard he worked. They put him on salads. In France, garde manger is a very high level position. Whereas in the United States, this position is the opposite; it’s a low position. Garde manger is a high level position in France because this position does terrines, truffle prep, foie preparations in addition to other items. Additionally because of his butchering experience from his first job in the kitchen in Venice, they also allowed him to cut some fish. So they put David in the fish station with the head fish guy who worked with him. Over the course of three months, David got to pop around a bit and help everyone. Just before his third and final month at Georges Blanc was almost complete David told Chef Blanc that he wanted to go work at another restaurant called L’Esperance, another three starred Michelin restaurant in Burgundy. Chef Blanc told David that he knew the chef at L’Esperance for thirty eight years and that Blanc would just give the chef, Marc Meneau, a call. So Blanc gave Meneau a call and the next thing David knew he was in Burgundy