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Nancy Silverton to be inducted into MenuMasters Hall of Fame

The Los Angeles chef and restaurateur will be honored in Chicago on May 18

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

February 7, 2024

2 Min Read
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Nancy Silverton will be inducted into the MenuMasters Hall of Fame at a gala celebration in Chicago this May.

The co-owner of the Mozza Restaurant Group in Los Angeles has been a fixture on Los Angeles’ dining scene for decades. She helped inspire the artisanal bread trend with the founding of La Brea Bakery in 1989, and raised the bar for Italian fine dining in the city with Campanile shortly thereafter, which she opened with then-husband Mark Peel.

She sold La Brea, and Campanile closed in 2012, but she went on to establish the Mozza Restaurant Group which consists of Osteria Mozza, Pizzeria Mozza, Mozza2Go, and Chi Spacca, all in Los Angeles, and Pizzeria Mozza Newport Beach, Calif, as well as restaurants Los Cabos, Mexico; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; London, and Singapore.

In 2014, she won the Outstanding Chef award from the James Beard Foundation, its highest honor.

That same year she was also named one of the most innovative women in food & drink by both Fortune and Food & Wine magazines. She was profiled in an episode of “Chef’s Table” on Netflix in 2017 and was featured in the G.O.A.T series on Masterclass in 2023.

Silverton is the author of eleven cookbooks, including Desserts (1986), Breads from La Brea Bakery (1996), Nancy Silverton’s Sandwich Book (2005), Twist of the Wrist (2007), The Mozza Cookbook (2011), Mozza at Home (2016), and chi SPACCA (2020). Her most recent cookbook, The Cookie That Changed My Life, was released in 2023 and was on the New York Time’s Bestseller List.  

Related:After a two-year delay, Thomas Keller to be inducted into MenuMasters Hall of Fame

She participates in fundraising for charitable causes including the Los Angeles Food Bank and Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, and participates in a wide variety of events, including the Food & Wine Magazine Classic in Aspen, where she most recently spoke in 2023.

MenuMasters winners are selected by Nation’s Restaurant News in a program sponsored by Ventura foods.

Silverton joins a long and prestigious list of MenuMasters Hall of Fame inductees, including Lidia Bastianich, Wolfgang Puck, Paul Prudhomme, Jacques Pépin, José Andrés, and Thomas Keller.

She and other yet-to-be-named awardees will be honored at the annual MenuMasters Celebration on May 18 at a new location, at Morgan MFG in Chicago’s West Loop.

For more details, visit MenuMasters.com.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] 

 

About the Author

Bret Thorn

Senior Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News

Senior Food & Beverage Editor

Bret Thorn is senior food & beverage editor for Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality for Informa’s Restaurants and Food Group, with responsibility for spotting and reporting on food and beverage trends across the country for both publications as well as guiding overall F&B coverage. 

He is the host of a podcast, In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn, which features interviews with chefs, food & beverage authorities and other experts in foodservice operations.

From 2005 to 2008 he also wrote the Kitchen Dish column for The New York Sun, covering restaurant openings and chefs’ career moves in New York City.

He joined Nation’s Restaurant News in 1999 after spending about five years in Thailand, where he wrote articles about business, banking and finance as well as restaurant reviews and food columns for Manager magazine and Asia Times newspaper. He joined Restaurant Hospitality’s staff in 2016 while retaining his position at NRN. 

A magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in history, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Thorn also studied traditional French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He spent his junior year of college in China, studying Chinese language, history and culture for a semester each at Nanjing University and Beijing University. While in Beijing, he also worked for ABC News during the protests and ultimate crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thorn’s monthly column in Nation’s Restaurant News won the 2006 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for best staff-written editorial or opinion column.

He served as president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, in 2005.

Thorn wrote the entry on comfort food in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd edition, published in 2012. He also wrote a history of plated desserts for the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, published in 2015.

He was inducted into the Disciples d’Escoffier in 2014.

A Colorado native originally from Denver, Thorn lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Bret Thorn’s areas of expertise include food and beverage trends in restaurants, French cuisine, the cuisines of Asia in general and Thailand in particular, restaurant operations and service trends. 

Bret Thorn’s Experience: 

Nation’s Restaurant News, food & beverage editor, 1999-Present
New York Sun, columnist, 2005-2008 
Asia Times, sub editor, 1995-1997
Manager magazine, senior editor and restaurant critic, 1992-1997
ABC News, runner, May-July, 1989

Education:
Tufts University, BA in history, 1990
Peking University, studied Chinese language, spring, 1989
Nanjing University, studied Chinese language and culture, fall, 1988 
Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, Cértificat Elémentaire, 1986

Email: [email protected]

Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-thorn-468b663/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bret.thorn.52
Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
Instagram: @foodwriterdiary

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