Nancy Silverton

EO

You seem really busy.

NS

Because I enjoy what I do so much, it doesn’t register as annoyingly busy. [Laughs.]

EO

To me, it reads like clarity and focus meeting in motion in a really cool way. It seems like you’re building a city.

NS

What’s interesting is that you know how I’m in Hollywood. Many folks, as they mature, will complain about how they eventually get aged out. But in our business, the food business, that doesn’t really happen the same way. Sometimes I’ll talk to somebody who’s pitching a project, and they’ll say: “We want to pitch this to you. And I know it doesn’t sound like anything now, but in 10 years, it’s going to be.” Do you know how old I am? [Laughs.] I do know that I’ll be around in the next 10 years, but every time somebody proposes a new opportunity, I just realize that this business is built differently, and has different capacities that can hold us.

EO

Were you ever thinking about age?

NS

No, well, I guess always a little bit. In my industry, I don’t think people are necessarily thinking in that way, as they do, in say Hollywood.

EO

Do you have a close business relationship with Hollywood?

NS

Oh, yeah, we definitely do. For instance, a couple nights ago, we curated food for a huge event at the Academy Museum. And that was so star studded. Though, I didn’t even know who any of the stars were. Last night, I was redoing the menu for Soho House, which had a bit of a celebrity clientele. So yes, we’re involved in that world, but celebrities certainly don’t care how old you are, as long as they get something good to eat, right?

EO

What has continued to drive your curiosity and renew your faith in food?

NS

I’m constantly being inspired—whether it’s something I taste, a photograph I see, or a conversation I overhear. A single experience can be enough to open up a line of curiosity. Just recently, a meal stayed with me in that way: not because I wanted to recreate it, but because it prompted questions about how I might approach it differently, how an ingredient could be used in another register. That sense of possibility is what continues to excite me, whether through hospitality or through the act of making food itself.

EO

When do you feel like you properly entered into a flow state? Was it when you were conceptualizing and executing the La Brea Bakery?

NS

La Brea Bakery, that was a huge challenge. I don’t think I’ll ever take on a challenge like that again because, first of all, I don’t think I’ll ever have the drive again, and, second, I don’t have the time to begin another process that never actually finishes. I always draw a comparison between the process of creating a loaf of bread and the process of creating a chocolate chip cookie. Creating a chocolate chip cookie is finite. Maybe your tastes change and you think it’s a little sweet for you and maybe start cutting down on the sugar. But for the most part, once you develop your recipe for a chocolate chip cookie, you check it off your list for the rest of your life. But that’s not true about bread because there are so many components to it that are not predictable which remain constant and affect the outcome. In that sense, the process of creating a recipe is really the process of understanding what it takes to make a loaf of bread and how you can manipulate it. There’s not that one answer for everything. You can read all the Dr. Spock books you want on how to parent, but you’re never going to find your answer because each child is so unique. It’s the same with bread making, or cheese making, or wine making; all of those processes work with something that’s alive.

EO

What skills did you carry forth from the earlier half of your life that led to the success of La Brea Bakery?

NS

I look for what I call the highest bar and then I work to achieve it; this, as opposed to inventing something that’s never been had before or eaten or seen, like the world of some of those super creative chefs like Ferran Adriàs. They have this vision of something they’ve never seen before. Meanwhile, I see something and then I try to find my own path to mimic that. In that sense, I’m more a copier than an inventor. For instance, having what I thought at the time was the perfect slice of bread at Poilâne Bakery in Paris, I set out to do everything in my power to remake it. What I didn’t realize at the time was that, because I had no idea of what I was doing, I was able to try things that I wouldn’t have otherwise. Imagine if somebody said that you could never add malt to a bread. If I had done the research, I wouldn’t have tried that because no one else was doing it. But instead, I tried adding malt to bread, and I came up with what I was looking for.

Nothing stopped me from trying because I didn’t know what I was doing. And there weren’t the tools, books, or bakers available at that time. So I was on my own.

EO

How old were you when you started La Brea Bakery?

NS

La Brea Bakery opened in 1989, and I was born in 1954, so I was 35. And I was already working on that bread for at least a year and a half before that.

EO

When did you go to Le Cordon Bleu in London?

NS

In 1977.

EO

And then you went to Paris. Having traveled so much yourself, would you consider Los Angeles a  global city?

NS

Yeah, I certainly think of it as a global city. Not quite like Paris or New York, but I do. It’s certainly not Podunk.

EO

What about in terms of the palette? You are so firmly rooted in other places, like Italy. How do you decide what food to present to people in LA?

NS

First of all, I think that if I believe in it, then I can at least try to convince my audience. When we first opened La Brea Bakery, some of the comments that I received on the bread were negative. Let’s say your bread is baked too dark. Some people would say there was all this dirt all over the bread, when it was actually just residual flour, which is something I was looking for. A lot of people also said the crumb was too open and my fillings would fall through it. These were all of the details that I was actually looking for, right? And because I understood that, I was able to defend them. But I know that there’s a lot of things that I did or tried that were kind of ahead of their time and never really took off. Once I tried to put a cheese plate on the menu at Campanile, but I just could not get our clientele behind that program. Several years later, as people traveled more and were more exposed to cheese as a course, it became easier, although I never returned to it. I believe that because of New York’s proximity to Europe, more people in that city are exposed to the sophisticated elements you run across there, certainly more so than in LA.

EO

What inspired your project when you were met with that resistance? Was there a method that you put into place as a marker of success? Did experimenting change as a whole if there was no fluency?

NS

With that cheese program, I decided not to continue doing it to avoid a certain loss to the business. The bread program was a little bit different. I did meet resistance at the start, but because I was knowledgeable enough not to respond, I didn’t let it reach me or alter my path forward. Bread wasn’t something that I was just making out of a cookbook that I had no experience with and wouldn’t be able to sell. When you go to France to these artisanal bakeries, you’re going to see bread that is baked dark, which means that the sugars in the flour were caramelizing on the crust. Can’t you taste how sweet those notes are? That I could sell.

EO

The way you describe the earlier stages of your career and methods, you sound like an artist, in the way that you approach gathering materials and ingredients and interpret. Like, “Here’s an azure blue, but I want that blue to be a little bit darker. I want it to be more plum.”

NS

Yeah, absolutely. Also the sheer joy of introducing people to something new or something that you’re excited by was really affirming. If I taste something that moves me, I can’t wait to share that feeling and experience with the world. I discovered, say, five years ago that Spanish anchovies from the Cantabrian Sea were so much better than any anchovy anywhere else in the world. I could even get an anchovy hater to fall in love with them. It was exciting to me to taste how meaty they are. They’re not funky, but they deliver all that anchovy experience. Those are the kinds of things that I love.

I remember introducing our customers to the deliciousness of a simple gelato, one called a Fior di Latte, meaning “flower of the milk.” I told them there’s no vanilla, no egg, just milk. It’s just milkiness. That with a really generous drizzle of a minimum-aged 25-year balsamic vinegar is so delicious. The same goes for when we first started doing olive oil gelato at our restaurant some years ago. People would be disgusted by the idea until they tasted it. Now, olive oil cakes and gelato are really popular. If one’s enthusiasm is genuine, like mine, then it can be infectious—eventually.

EO

When did that clarity arrive for you?

NS

When I started trusting my own taste. I first started getting attention in the food world when I went to Spago with my late husband, Mark Silverton, because he was the opening chef and I was the pastry chef with Wolfgang Puck. Because I was the head in my department I had to trust my vision and intuition for what the food program would be, and shortly after that’s when I got attention in food reviews, awards, etc.

EO

What part of your process was formalized when you worked at Spago?

NS

Well, I was responsible for my menu, the good and the bad. [Laughs.] Before that, at Michael’s, I was the assistant pastry chef, and I could hide behind Jimmy Brinkley, who was the lead pastry chef. These were his desserts and I was helping him make them. At Spago, all of a sudden, these desserts were mine, whether you loved or hated them, it was a reflection of me and my taste and something that I put on the menu.

EO

How did that change your relationship to making?

NS

I don’t know if it changed my relationship to making, but as I created, I knew that I was making for an audience bigger than just myself. You do have to start with yourself because you have to like it, but you also have to make sure that the rest of the world likes it too. Otherwise, you’re in the wrong business. I mean, I’m in the business to sell, so I had to make sure that I was making things that people would actually love and eat.

EO

How has collaboration informed your practice?

NS

I love collaboration, and I still do it. I wouldn’t be able to function as a private chef because that’s when you’re really on your own. But, even today, collaborating with the cooks, no matter what the level they’re at in the restaurant, is what I thrive on. I think everyone can bring an interesting take or note into the development of a dish. Collaboration to me is key.

EO

How has it been living in LA for as long as you have now? Do you think about the Spago days?

NS

Oh, all the time. And not only do I think about the Spago days, but also that whole generation of chefs. I’ve talked to a couple colleagues of mine that were working a few years before me. We all kind of agree that we were successful in what we did because we didn’t know what we were doing. Kind of like what I was saying to you about the process of learning or teaching myself how to make a loaf of bread. We didn’t know what we were doing—we just cooked. Now it seems like people that are getting into the business are more concerned with having a plan at the onset. They start with one thing, then online presence, then TV, and so on. They have this plan that kind of gets in the way. We were all just beginners and explorers. We were all setting that path for this generation. I’m much happier that I started in my generation where we didn’t know what we were doing.

EO

Do you remember if that time felt affirming despite the discomfort and the uncertainty?

NS

Well, again, it was more such unfamiliar territory. We just sort of did it, but we did it together. And slowly, the idea of recognizing the food world as an important aspect of life settled in culture more broadly. We always recognized the other things as being really important to one’s life. Art, sports, and then food–before I started cooking or sort of entered this world, I don’t think that food was really on the map. Do you?

EO

No. But in California, I grew up on Mozza’s pizza in those seasonal in-betweens, El Coyote’s Mexican cuisine, and Yang Chow’s on Christmas and New Years. Your food and the atmosphere of the restaurant dress the background of my adolescence. At the time, Italian food didn’t have such a huge presence, and the way in which you experimented with pizza and salads was so ahead of its time. It punctured the Los Angeles palette and came to define our city and put it on the map in a new way. We’re just now meeting a lot of the innovations you’ve put forward in recent years. Your curiosities allowed for new standards to come into being that wasn’t a reality some 20 years ago.

NS

Agreed, but it was not just me. It was also my colleagues in California. So definitely Alice Waters, Joyce Goldstein, Judy Roger, Mary Sue and Susan, on and on. And yes, so many things that have come out of those early years are just commonplace now. The relationship between a restaurateur and the importance of a farmer’s market, let say. We all recognized that a gazillion years ago and then in the last 15 or so years, it became widespread. That expression, “farm to table,” always makes me laugh because vegetables always came from a farm. The other one that’s really interesting that people are embracing right now is “live fire cooking.” Oh, really? Cooking with wood, that goes back many, many years. In California we really understood that great dishes could come off of a simple grill.

EO

Considering how people usually associate pastries with France, how do you feel California has made itself known over the decades since you were at Spago? Were you just focused on an ingredient and making certain flavors known? How did you conceive of California relative to New York or elsewhere?

NS

Two and a half years after Spago opened, we had the opportunity to work on a menu in New York. We went ahead with it, but it was a situation that didn’t end up working out for us, and thank goodness. Regardless, I fell in love with the city and its energy. I thought it was where I wanted to plant my feet and open a restaurant. That was the case until we took a month off and rented a house in Italy. This was the first time in my marriage that we actually cooked and ate together as a family. I realized then that the kind of food I like to eat and cook was food that was produce driven. But back in 1986, the farmer’s market in New York just really didn’t exist. The Union Square Market may have been there, but nobody used it. That was the era when you went into D’Agostino and all there was in the late fall and through winter were underripe vegetables trucked out from California. The one thing that I did like about New York, and still do, is that a lot of the importers and small businesses like delis work really hard to bring in some great products from Europe, though these were more like shelf-stable products. We’re getting them here now, but it took longer. There was better dried pasta to find in New York, better balsamic vinegar, better varieties of olive oils, as well as some really great hard cheeses, like Parmigiano-Reggiano. We’ve got it here now as well, but it took some years.

EO

So what were the more immediate advantages of making food in LA? What were the ingredients available?

NS

Seasonal vegetables could be bought during a longer period of time. Our spring is much longer than New York’s.

EO

When you went from fresh vegetables to then making pizza, how did that affect your process?

NS

The success of a dish is a reflection of its components. So it wasn’t just the dough of a pizza—it was also about what went on it. Not compromising with any of the ingredients was something that was possible in LA in a way that just wasn’t in New York.

EO

Did making pizza affect your bread making practice?

NS

It was a continuation. People would ask what kind of pizza I was making and would rattle off the names that they knew: Chicago deep dish, New York, Detroit, Neapolitan. All I could say, and what I still say, is that it’s my pizza. I applied my bread baking discipline to the crust because I knew exactly what I wanted it to taste and to look like.

EO

How has being in LA and with the entertainment industry impacted the kind of food that you’ve remained interested in making?

NS

Well, I don’t think that Hollywood component has really influenced it, especially since that’s not the clientele that I cater to. When I’m thinking of a dish, I’m not thinking about how the famous people are going to react to it. It would come into play if I was curating a special dinner for that clientele. If that were the case, it would probably be food that’s more familiar rather than cutting edge. Not that I usually use cutting edge ingredients, but still I think Hollywood prefers familiarity and nutritional, low-caloric food.

I’ve always said that in LA, there are restaurants that are industry driven, places meant to be seen where the food is secondary. I’ve always wanted the food at my restaurants to be the most important part. Obviously the hospitality is important, but I never wanted to create a restaurant that was geared towards Hollywood, and that’s not true with a lot of places in LA. We do have our handful of industry people that eat here all the time, but they take off their industry hats and enjoy the food. And that’s who we certainly try to cater to.

EO

When you were in the early stages of conceptualizing who your restaurants would ideally cater to, who was that person? A food lover? Would you imagine people gathering around your kitchen table? What culture were you manifesting?

NS

I was trying both with Campanile and at Mozza to create a neighborhood restaurant for nightly cravings that was also a destination, a place for celebrations. I wanted a place driven by food and service. The food wouldn’t be cheap or fast. They weren’t places to be seen. The food was the focal point and an outlet for me.

EO

How did you land on the location of Mozza? It’s so  hectic. Did that move itself feel like a risk?

NS

When we opened Campanile and La Brea Bakery, that area was no man’s land. I think people were afraid of going that far south because there was no business around. Despite that, I’ve always felt, and it’s proven true, certainly in LA, that if you’re good, people will come. Location helps, but it’s not determining. As far as this corner, I wanted to be close to where I live in Hancock Park. I’ve always known that I didn’t want to have to commute. People said that the corner of Highland and Melrose is just a nightmare, which I understand. But it had the real estate that I needed, so that’s really why I ended up there even though it wasn’t a prime location. And the rent reflects that. It’s far from the Beverly Hills or Abbot Kinney prices.

EO

What has remained the priority within your business thinking? Is it practicality or familiarity? Do you invite change?

NS

I haven’t always been right. We opened a restaurant in San Diego in a space that was given to us. We thought that the restaurant would become an anchor to draw in other businesses. But it was just a terrible location. There was no parking lot, only metered parking. For whatever reason, that community thought that having to pay for parking was unheard of. There were also no other businesses that had any draw. Within a year, we realized this was not working. We opened instead in Newport Beach on Pacific Coast Highway, but we still had the same problem where there wasn’t free parking. So I haven’t always had the best sense. Finding the location for Mozza, I made sure it was the right part of town, the right size building. I didn’t think of the negative parts like the fact that it’s a busy corner. [Laughs.] We’ve probably had eight cars that drove into our front door before they turned left. It’s a crazy corner and the traffic just whooshes by, but now there’s around six restaurants. There’s Twaek, a sushi place, another Japanese restaurant across the street, and Jordan Kahn has Meteora. I mean, there’s a lot right here on this little corner now.

EO

Because you’re such a global figure, I think it’s funny to think that your type of food is often labeled “home cooking.”

NS

I agree. The design contributes to that. It’s not a dated restaurant—you walk in and you feel like this is where you want to be. It’s timeless. Restaurants that are designed to attract Hollywood clientele tend to be very short lived. We build restaurants for longevity.

EO

What do you think has been the consistent guiding force of your practice since your earliest encounters with food? What defined the conditions that drove you to make food a space of clarity for you?

NS

The pleasure that I’ve always gotten from feeding people comes from their enjoyment but also that feeling of bringing people together. That’s always been something that I’ve loved and continue to do.

EO

Do you feel that making food is a process of you being in conversation with yourself, driven by personal experiences?

NS

I want food to be part of that process of bringing people together. Feeding and nurturing that unity is more important to me than creating a dish meant to be cherished or put on an altar. It’s definitely two different schools. I’d rather have people laughing and talking and not necessarily concentrating on every aspect of what they’re eating. Just knowing that the meal is helping them enjoy being with other people is enough for me.

EO

Do you still feel like a chef? What do you feel like you’re doing now? Does it still feel like the same thing or has it become about the people again?

NS

Yeah, it does. It feels like every night you’re throwing a giant dinner party and somebody else is washing the dishes. No matter how big, how small, just living in that feeling alone is more than anything. Sometimes eating is a chore to me, especially when I get taken to a highly recommended restaurant. I can’t always eat nine tiny little courses in over four hours again and again. It’s like a chore, and can become a gimmick so quickly. So, I avoid that atmosphere in my own restaurant.

EO

In Chef’s Table, you talk about your dad calling one day to tell you you’d lost everything from La Brea Bakery in a Ponzi scheme, and you describe how you basically had to start again from scratch.  What kept you grounded in those moments?

NS

Right. It was another yet important bump in the road for me, and while some people fall apart when they have those, I think just having the right attitude helps a lot during the landing. I always believe that it’s not always a straight, perfect path, and you just have to reinvent. Nobody welcomed 2020, but I think a lot of us learned a lot from it, so there were a lot of silver linings to that time.

EO

Speaking of, how was Covid-19 for you? It didn’t even cross my mind to ask. You had been an industry veteran at that point.

NS

We can reinvent and we can adapt, but not everybody could or had the opportunity to. There were a lot of people that didn’t make it. We all know about the way that kitchens have historically conducted themselves; Covid was a good time to redefine that. That change was a good thing. So we have to look at those hiccups as learning tools.

EO

So it presented itself as a moment of reckoning for you to update your way of working, yes?

NS

Yeah. And also to appreciate when things could somewhat go back to the way they were. The separation of tables, no music, nothing allowed on the table, servers were not allowed to interact with the customers, no wine service, interactions with customers behind these masks where you couldn’t see expressions and you couldn’t hear their enthusiasm. All of this made us really appreciate how important service and interaction are, how food keeps us connected to one another. The only way to feed people or to stay open was to cook and scrape things into a plastic container. I didn’t get a lot of joy out of that. That was not the kind of dinner party I wanted.

EO

What would Nancy of 1989 think of Nancy of 2025?

NS

I think the 1989 me still exists. I’m still a tweaker, and I’m never satisfied with what I did yesterday.

EO

How have you made room for or come to understand that restlessness?

NS

I’ve accepted it’s part of my nature. I also think that the people that I’ve drawn into my circle understand that about me. They understand that just because I liked it yesterday doesn’t mean I’ll like it tomorrow. And that can be frustrating, but they know that that’s the way I work.

Something can always be better. Just because you fall in love with this presentation, it doesn’t mean that it will last. I wake up in the middle of the night thinking of a newer presentation or a new way to tweak things all the time. And it’s always only for the better.