Jeremiah Tower

Jeremiah Tower (born 1942) is an American celebrity chef and restaurateur who, along with Alice Waters and Wolfgang Puck, pioneered 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.

Early life and education

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 got a bachelor's degree at Harvard University and got a 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.

Culinary career

Inspired by a berry tart he had eaten at 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 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, then in 1980 taught briefly at the California Culinary Academy.