Curtis stone education center

Culinary Leaders Praise ICE

Greg Morabito: Today in the Eater Upsell studios, we have a chef who is a huge player in the LA scene. He’s also a celebrity chef, you’ve probably seen him on TV: Mr. Curtis Stone.

Helen Rosner: Curtis, welcome to the Eater Upsell!

Curtis Stone: Thank you so much, it’s nice to be here.

Greg: As a tasting menu chef, when there’s a new tasting menu in the city that you’re in — whether that’s LA or somewhere you’re visiting — do you intentionally check it out?

Curtis: I love eating tasting menus, to be honest. There’s different types, too. We talk about them as if they’re one thing quite often, but you can go and have a 28-course digger station and you could also have a five-course digger station, and they’re really different experiences. But for sure, I do. I think what’s interesting about them, for me, is you’re saying to the chef, "All right, you want to orchestrate something: Go for it." It’s interesting. You don’t go to a concert and get to choose which songs they play, but you go out for dinner and you want to choose how you eat. I understand that because sometimes that’s exactly — you feel like something. You want to go to a certain place to get a certain thing. But I think there’s certainly room as well for a dining experience where the chef really thinks it through, in as much detail as they can, down to how you drink. Each course pairs to something delicious to drink, and there’s got to be a progression to that for it to really make sense.

Helen: As a testing menu chef yourself, when you eat other peoples’ tasting menus, are you seeing the strings that are holding it all together? Do you feel like you perceive it in a way that the average diner doesn’t?

Curtis: Probably, yeah. As a chef, you sort of sit back and — because you’re used to doing the process yourself, you’re obviously thinking about how they’ve done it, and what decisions they’ve made, and why they’ve made them. I have an interesti

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Curtis began his cooking career in his homeland of Australia and later honed his skills at Michelin-starred restaurants in London under renowned Chef Marco Pierre White. His first solo restaurant, Maude in Beverly Hills, California, opened in 2014 to rave reviews. Curtis opened his second restaurant, Gwen Butcher Shop & Restaurant in Hollywood, California, with his brother Luke in July 2016. Curtis’ restaurants have been honored with top accolades including Restaurant of the Year (Eater LA), Best New Restaurant and Best Restaurant (LA Weekly), and Most Beautiful Restaurant in the Country (Eater National), while Curtis himself has received awards such as Chef of The Year 2016 (Eater LA, both Editor’s and Reader’s Choice) and the first Excellence in the Culinary Arts Award from the Australian Government.

With the success of the restaurants and growing demand for customized culinary experiences, Curtis Stone Events was launched in 2017. Designing and tailoring personalized occasions while upholding the standards of Maude and Gwen, this new full-service company aims to raise the bar in the live events industry. Curtis has appeared on a number of top-rated programs including "Take Home Chef" (TLC), "Top Chef Masters" (Bravo), and "All-Star Academy” (Food Network). Curtis is head judge on Emmy-nominated "Top Chef Junior," an extension of the NBC "Top Chef" franchise, alongside host Vanessa Lachey. He hosted his first season of "Moveable Feast with Fine Cooking" on PBS. Curtis is a New York Times best-selling author with six cookbooks, his most recent titled, "Good Food, Good Life," and is a regular contributor to sev

When you watch “Field Trip with Curtis Stone,” airing on KLCS’ Create (58.3), you are actually watching the way he researches for his thoughtful menus at his Michelin-starred Beverly Hills restaurant Maude, and not just filming something for a show. Curtis talks to KLCS about the inception of his new PBS show, his initial reservations about cooking on TV and some of his favorite places to food shop in Los Angeles.

Curtis, your new show airs now on CreateTV, but I recall you guest hosting on “Moveable Feast,” which was similar in that you traveled and it looked like so much fun. Was that how this came about?
You’re right it is a bit of a similar format. When we were putting the menu together for “Maude,” I was talking to somebody that I worked with on that show, Dave, the cinematographer, who’d become a friend and I was telling him a little bit about what we were doing for the restaurant. He’s like, “Oh my gosh, you should film it!” I said, “Nah, it’s super nerdy, chefs and wine guys and we run around the area.” “That sounds like a TV show,” he said, “just let me come.” So he came and shot Rioja, which was our first ever episode, I guess, and our second wine region that we’d done as a menu. And he cut together this little sizzle and showed it to me. I said, “You’re right it could be a TV show.” It’s happened pretty organically.

You actually go to other places to prepare for the menu for your restaurant?
We do. We change the menu four times a year; it always revolves around a different region. And all the wine pairing for that comes from that region, so [the] wine team pulls together all that stuff, and then me and Chris or our pastry chef, or whoever it is, we go together to the region to do the exploration, because it’s an interesting thing, when you do travel, it’s not necessarily the obvious stuff. It’s the little nuances of a place or the people you get a little in-tune with, and that’s how you get inspired for it.

That’s amazing, because I would a