Cooking from Toronto to LA: Celebrating Jeff Thurston, our 2024 Chef of the Year
- by bonappetit
Jeff Thurston at The Huntington
Jeff Thurston has been at this for a while. Compass and Bon Appétit Management Company’s 2024 Chef of the Year has been working in restaurants since he was a teenager growing up in Toronto. The first job at a quick service restaurant functioned to support his bike habit, he says. “From a young age I rode a bike all over the city,” says Jeff. While the first restaurant gig was a means to an end, it didn’t take long for the energy of restaurants to grab hold of Jeff. Over 30 years later, he still thrives off the action in the back of the house and the buzz of guests in the front of the house.
Working in Toronto, Jeff moved on from the quick service restaurant to a bar and grill, hopping from there to a role under a French chef at a bistro in the city’s theater district. Between that position and the next one working in an Italian spot, he “learned how to move in the kitchen, and learned the sense of urgency you need to make dinner service happen,” he says. He was hooked. “I aspired to learn what I could learn and become the top cheese in the kitchen. I worked a long time getting there.”
At The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, CA, just northeast of LA, Jeff oversees a team of 150 and an operation that includes a four-station café, a Chinese restaurant called the Jade Court Cafe, and the newly renovated and re-opened Rose Garden Tea Room. In his role as executive chef there, he’s hands-on leader, cooking, expediting, and teaching his staff. He aims to teach them not only culinary techniques but how to adapt and respond in an always-dynamic environment.
Jeff has had decades to hone both people and culinary skills, with a resume that’s taken him across the continent and up and down the West Coast running restaurants of all sizes and styles.
Jeff in front of his hometown’s skyline
In the early 1990’s, he moved from Toronto to the Los Angeles area, where he landed a job with famed chef Wolfgang Puck, who had helped usher in California cuisine in the 1980’s and who also played a key role in the fusion craze of the 1990’s – marrying Old World technique with flavors from all over the world, particularly those of an array of cultures and cuisines from Asian countries like Vietnam, Thailand, and Japan. Jeff joined Puck at his restaurant Eureka, where, he says, “you’d look out into the dining room and see like, David Bowie, and realize we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Jeff climbed the culinary ladder throughout the 90’s, moving from LA to San Francisco and eventually to Seattle, where he re-joined Puck to helm the kitchen in the short-lived Seattle outpost of ObaChine. By 1998 he was back in California, this time to San Diego, where he took over as executive chef at a National Landmark called The Prado in Balboa Park, kicking off a new phase of his career – overseeing dining operations in historically significant locations, including The Huntington, where he started in 2017.
The Huntington is a public institution with extensive library, art, and botanical collections built by railroad businessman Henry Huntington and his wife, Arabella. It opened to the public in 1928 and has served as a vibrant hub for research and exploration ever since. The culinary program is as sophisticated as its surroundings, highlighting ingredients from the Huntington’s gardens and boasting what Jeff describes as “arguably the best English tea service in Southern California, if not on the West Coast of the U.S.” Between scones and cucumber sandwiches in the renovated Rose Garden Tea Room and potstickers and noodles in the Jade Court Cafe, Jeff’s expertise in various cuisines and techniques has plenty of space to shine.
He spends long days at The Huntington, where as a leader, he strives to maintain a work environment where staff not only feel empowered to make decisions and solve problems, but where the energy and vibes are on point, he says. “We spend the majority of our days together,” says Jeff. “To have a positive, upbeat atmosphere is so important.”
After 30-plus years in an industry known for its long hours and intense pace, that might seem like a tall order. Not for Jeff. When he’s off the clock, he’s decompressing as a dog dad, and when he’s at work, he’s mainly having fun. “It’s really stimulating to get to do the things we do,” he says. “Every day is different and there’s a lot keeping me engaged and involved.”