Jeremiah Tower

Jeremiah Tower (born 1942) is an American celebrity chef who, along with Alice Waters and Wolfgang Puck, has been credited with pioneering the culinary style known as California cuisine.

A food lover from childhood, he had no formal culinary education before beginning his career as a chef.

Tower was born in 1942 in Stamford, Connecticut.

The son of a managing director of an international film sound equipment company, he was educated at Saint Ignatius' College, Riverview in Sydney, Australia; at Parkside School in Surrey, England; and at Loomis Chaffee in Connecticut.

He attended Harvard University, earning a B.A., and then completed his master's degree in Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Tower is gay.

After earning his master's degree, he had intended to pursue design, specifically of underwater structures in Hawaii, because of his obsession with finding the lost city of Atlantis.

But when his grandfather died, Tower, who was accustomed to being financially supported, found himself out of money and in need of employment.

Inspired by a berry tart he had eaten at the then-unknown Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California, Tower applied for a job there in 1972.

His skills and brazenness recreating traditional French food led Alice Waters and her partners to hire him.

Within a year, he became an equal partner with Waters and others.

He was in charge of the kitchen, the menus, and the promotion of the restaurant.

Tower left Chez Panisse in 1978 after philosophical and business disagreements with the majority of the board and with Waters in particular (they rejected his idea to open a Panisse Cafe).

He next worked at the Ventana Inn in Big Sur, and then in 1980 taught briefly at the California Culinary Academy.

In 1981, Tower revived the failing Balboa Cafe in San Francisco, a restaurant was owned by Cathe and Doyle Moon.

In 1982, he became chef at Santa Fe Bar and Grill in Berkeley, California, also owned by the Moons.

In 1984, in partnership with Cathe and Doyle Moon, Tower opened Stars, which became one of the top-grossing restaurants in the Bay Area.

Tower opened branches of the restaurant in Oakville (Napa Valley), Palo Alto, Manila, and Singapore.

Numerous American future celebrity chefs worked in the Stars network, including Mario Batali, George Francisco, Dominique Crenn, Joey Altman, and Brendan Walsh, as well as pastry chefs Emily Luchetti and Jerry Traunfeld.

In 1985, Tower was named in Who's Who in American Cooking by Cook’s Magazine. Tower's first book, New American Classics, won a James Beard Foundation Award in 1986 for "Best American Regional Cookbook".

In the 1990s, Tower owned a cafe in Hong Kong, the Peak Cafe, as well as various related ventures in San Francisco that included a more casual cafe, an upscale bistro, and a kitchenware shop.

As his fame grew, he licensed his name and earned celebrity endorsement contracts, including one for Dewar's Scotch.

Tower won the James Beard Foundation Award for "Best Chef in California" in 1993 and "Outstanding Chef of the Year" in 1996.

In 1998, Tower sold part of his interest in the Stars restaurants to a Singapore-based real estate company.

The new owners closed Stars after two years of operation.

Tower moved to Manila for a year, and then to New York City for four years, followed by a move to Italy and then Mexico.

In 2014, Tower was hired as executive chef of Tavern on the Green in New York City, but left in April 2015 after six months.

In 2016, the biographical documentary Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent, directed by Lydia Tenaglia and produced by Anthony Bourdain and Zero Point Zero productions, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.

In addition to writing two books in 2016, Tower was the key speaker at the Ken Hom lecture series at Oxford Brookes University.

The 100-minute film was bought by The Orchard for US distribution in 2017.

On November 12, 2017, the film was broadcast on CNN.

In 2017, Tower appeared on Top Chef, the Rick Stein-presented BBC TV show Road to Mexico, the CRAVE wine and food festival in Spokane, Washington, as guest of honor at Chef's Roll in Miami Beach, and as a judge at the Basque Culinary Center World Awards in Mexico City.

A list of restaurants Tower was associated with.

In 2017, Jeremiah Tower was appointed a Founding Patron of the Oxford Cultural Collective, an educational body specializing in hospitality and gastronomy.