A return to his roots

Michael Chiarello doesn’t come across as a celebrity chef. First of all, he calls himself a cook, not a chef. And he’s not much for molecular gastronomy or 12-course tasting menus either.

Instead, he sticks with his Italian heritage, serving up rich polenta and gnocchi, octopus and sausage dishes that satisfy the soul.

“My job has always been to take food down off its pedestal,” Chiarello says while relaxing in the kitchen of his St. Helena home, “and to look for the next level: the psychological, emotional underpinnings. ... I want people to feel great.”

Since serving as the opening chef of Tra Vigne in 1987, Chiarello has done just that. It’s been a wild ride, as the talented entrepreneur spun off 10 restaurants, an olive oil company and a specialty retail business, plus a series of award-winning cookbooks, TV cooking shows and organic, homegrown wines.

After being out of the restaurant business for eight years, Chiarello plunged back into the kitchen last December, opening Bottega in Yountville’s historic V Marketplace, the former Vintage 1870 building where Napa Valley cooking was born. French Laundry founders Sally and Don Schmitt first opened The Chutney Kitchen there as a gathering spot for vintners back in the 1970s, and the Napa Valley Cooking School got its start in the building in 1973, thanks to food-and-wine pioneers Belle and Barney Rhodes.

“It’s the beginning of modern hospitality in the valley,” Chiarello says. “Barney and Belle brought me there to show me where it all started.”

Trim and athletic-looking at 47, Chiarello decided to get back in the game because he missed the excitement and camaraderie of the restaurant kitchen.

“It’s a sport: There’s a strategy to every day, and you’re constantly looking for the next goalie, and you’re a player/coach,” he says. “I’m much more collaborative now. I enjoy starting a dish and letting someone else finish it.”

The tough, disciplined cook has mellowed with age, much like the top-rated Cabernets he grows in the 20-acre vineyard at his home, which he shares with his wife, Eileen Gordon, and their 3-year-old son, Aidan.

Smile lines around his eyes and flecks of gray at his temples have softened his chiseled good looks, the way tannins soften a wine’s mouthfeel. And years spent as an entrepreneur and father of four — he has three older daughters from a previous marriage — have tamed his impetuous nature.

With Aidan on his lap, Chiarello slices up fresh strawberries from the garden and appears at peace with himself and the world. He’s making jam and telling stories, just like the old days.

“I got started like this, sitting around the table,” he says. “My mother would get a project started, and I’d cut the last 10 strawberries. We entertained ourselves with food.”

It’s been a long journey for Chiarello, a self-described “country bumpkin” who took his humble roots and used them to climb to the pinnacle of the food-and-wine world as an entertainer, teacher, grape grower and cook.

He was born Jan. 25, 1962, in Red Bluff to a family of immigrant Italian parents, the youngest of three sons. His mother, Antoinette, was born in Calabria, Italy, a hilly region in Southern Italy known for its tomatoes and olives. Her family settled amid the rocky rural crags of Dunsmuir in Northern California.

“Calabria is a very poor region, but the flavors are big,” he says. “We harvested, preserved, canned, cured and salted the fish.”

His father, a banker with the Bank of Italy before it merged with Bank of America in the 1920s, grew up in Susanville in the Sierra foothills. Both parents lived in all-Italian communities and held firm to their food traditions.

“There was always a prosciutto hanging in the kitchen,” Chiarello says. “They could get olives and grapes from the valley and forage for mushrooms.”

When Chiarello was 6 or 7, his family moved to Turlock, just south of Modesto in the San Joaquin Valley. Growing up in this farm region, he came to love and respect the field workers. His family farmed grapes and made wine during the harvest season. Farming fueled an interest in cooking, and by age 14, Chiarello traded in his cowboy hat for an apron and a restaurant apprenticeship.

At age 17, he put on his Wranglers and his cowboy boots and took his first plane ride east, to attend the prestigious Culinary Institute of America at Hyde Park in New York. After that, he went to hotel school in Miami, then served as the opening chef of Toby’s in Miami, which won acclaim for its cuisine.

On a trip to Northern California in 1986, Chiarello made his way to Stars in San Francisco, where chef Jeremiah Tower pointed him toward Napa Valley. There, he met Mustards Grill chef Cindy Pawlcyn, who told him about an Italian place that was opening just up the road in St. Helena. With the 24-year-old Chiarello as chef, Tra Vigne opened in 1987 and instantly raised the bar for Cal-Ital cuisine.

When the restaurant was slow in the winter, the Tra Vigne kitchen crew started curing olives and making their own olive oil, mozzarella and prosciutto. The cooks bargained with Italian growers and foraged for wild fennel and mushrooms.

“We started making salami when it was salami, not salumi,” Chiarello jokes. “It wasn’t a movement, it was a way of life.”

After a few years, Chiarello opened the Cantinetta, a wine bar next to Tra Vigne that sold specialty foods. Then in 1994, he started his own line of Consorzio flavored olive oils. In 1997, he opened Tomatina, a casual pizza place, then went on to launch a total of 10 restaurants across the country.

In 1997, Chiarello bought a 20-acre vineyard in St. Helena already planted to old-vine Zin and Petite Sirah, then added Cabernet vines and a contemporary, barn-style home. Aided by consultant Thomas Brown, Chiarello Family Vineyards began to produce estate red wines.

One month after his home was completed, Chiarello filmed his first cooking show, PBS’ “Season by Season,” in his own kitchen. He went on to host two more PBS shows before gaining national fame in 2003 as the host of the Food Network’s “Easy Entertaining.”

By 2000, he’d gotten out of the restaurant business and dedicated himself to sourcing products for NapaStyle, a specialty retailer of food and home products that encourages high-flavor cooking and adventurous entertaining. In the summer of 2008, Chiarello moved his flagship NapaStyle store to Yountville, where shoppers can get a bite to eat, taste wine and pick up some salumi, olive oil and artisan salt for dinner.

Next door at Bottega, Chiarello can be found behind the stove every day, creating big, bold flavors with longtime collaborator and Chef de Cuisine Nick Ritchie. Chiarello is there to greet guests, carefully taste dishes as they evolve, ask for feedback from diners, then carry that information back to the kitchen, so the team can do better next time.

In the prime of his life, Chiarello has come full circle, back to his mother’s kitchen table and the rich traditions of his ancestors.

“Your legacy is your cooks,” he says.

“… And your stories.”