Tag Archives: Menlo Park restaurant

Chef Simona Oliveri’s Unexpected Journey to Oak + Violet

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Italian-born Executive Chef Simona Oliveri.
Italian-born Executive Chef Simona Oliveri.

It was just like any morning at Oak + Violet restaurant in the Park James Hotel in Menlo Park. Until it wasn’t.

Three months into the job in December 2018, Simona Oliveri, arrived at the restaurant for her usual sous chef shift, only to find the executive chef had quit abruptly.

Faced with a full dining room later that night, Oliveri, the only woman on the culinary team of 16, did the only thing she could think of — she immediately called up all her vendors to start placing orders for the ingredients that would be needed that day.

And with that, she became the head chef of the restaurant, as well as the entire 63-room boutique hotel.

The bar at Oak + Violet.
The bar at Oak + Violet.

“I never imagined I would be doing this,” Oliveri, 42 says. “I’d never worked for a hotel before or run a restaurant before. But I know how to feed people.”

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Bradley Ogden Returns to the Bay Area with Bradley’s Fine Diner

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Lassen trout seafood stew at the new BFD in Menlo Park.

Lassen trout seafood stew at the new BFD in Menlo Park.

 

In the 1980s and 1990s, he elevated the Bay Area dining scene and made a name for himself as executive chef of Campton Place in San Francisco and co-founder of the Lark Creek Restaurant Group.

Since then, Chef Bradley Ogden’s attention had been focused mostly outside of the region, as he opened restaurants in Las Vegas with his son, Chef Bryan Ogden, and one in Solvang.

But now, following a move to the South Bay two years ago, Ogden is back — in a big way.

Three weeks ago after a year of construction, the James Beard Award-winning chef opened the doors to Bradley’s Fine Diner in Menlo Park. He’s also working on opening three restaurants in Houston. They’re all part of his Bradley Ogden Hospitality group, run with son Bryan, and business partner and industry veteran, Tony Angotti. The projects are being financed by investor Chris Kelly, Facebook’s first general consul, who first met Ogden when he asked the chef to cook a dinner he was hosting for then-President Bill Clinton.

Chef Bradley Ogden in the kitchen at his new restaurant.

Chef Bradley Ogden in the kitchen at his new restaurant.

Bradley’s Fine Diner or BFD for short is pure Ogden. Situated across from the Caltrain station, it’s an artsy roadhouse with plenty of natural wood, plus fun and funky touches like silverware chandeliers and a decorative wall with old knives stuck into it as if a knife thrower had just left the building after a practice spree.

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