Trailblazing chef Mark Peel, a Santa Rosa High graduate who popularized farm-to-table cooking, dies

Mark Peel, who went from dishwasher at a small Sonoma Valley restaurant where he learned to cook while a student at Santa Rosa High School to one of the pioneers of California cuisine, died in Los Angeles early this week from an aggressive form of cancer.

Peel, 66, a 1972 Santa Rosa High graduate, is credited with revolutionizing the Los Angeles restaurant scene by preparing tasty dishes made with fresh local ingredients.

He and his then-wife, Nancy Silverton, in 1989 opened Campanile, which ended up introducing countless California consumers to the farm-to-table concept and influencing a generation of chefs.

“It was really about buying really good ingredients from great local farmers and making really good simple food,” said veteran national food and beverage consultant Clark Wolf, who knew Peel and called him one of the world’s top chefs. “It changed the way Americans think about food across the board.”

Wolf, who lives part of the year in a cabin between Guerneville and Monte Rio and in the 1970s ran Napa Valley’s historic Oakville Grocery, said Peel was “the kindest, dearest person — and a really good cook.”

Peel was born in Los Angeles on Nov. 19, 1954. For his many accolades including a coveted James Beard Foundation Award in 2001, Peel is perhaps best known for the 20-plus-year run he and his former wife had at legendary Campanile and the La Brea Bakery they operated next door to the restaurant. Although they sold the bakery nearly 20 years ago, it remains a global brand.

In 1979, he was cooking at Michael’s in Santa Monica, where he met Silverton, also a chef. Eventually, they became successful restaurant partners in California and for a short stint in New York. From their Manhattan outpost, many East Coast diners got their first taste of fresh meals made from the bounty of local farms.

Peel helped Wolfgang Puck open Spago in West Hollywood in 1982, and insisted that Puck hire Silverton as a pastry chef. The three made a powerhouse in the kitchen.

“He really had his own style and he loved working the grill,” Puck told the Los Angeles Times. “He was running Spago when it was so busy, but he always kept his cool and never screamed at anybody in the kitchen. He always wanted the food to be perfect; he didn’t care how long it took.”

Peel and Silverton married in 1984. A year later, they went to New York City to run Maxwell’s Plum. Then after a year they returned to Los Angeles and soon opened Campanile. She left the restaurant after the couple divorced. Today, she remains in the industry as chef and co-owner of upscale Italian eatery Osteria Mozza in Los Angeles.

Josh Silvers, co-owner of Jackson’s Bar and Oven in Santa Rosa’s Railroad Square section, was a young chef some 15 years ago when he met Peel at a gathering of chefs from around the nation for a three-day educational event in the Yosemite Valley. Silvers had the chance to eat a dinner there at the Ahwahnee Dining Room that Peel prepared as one of the featured chefs.

“He was one of the chefs I really looked up to,” Silvers said of Peel. “He really was on the forefront of what is California cuisine.”

Silvers explained that Peel’s signature cooking style was derived from the fresh meats, fruits and vegetables he bought from area farmers he frequently visited in his Dodge Ram pickup. He was known to name menu items after local products.

Wolf said Peel had a “real dedication to the land,” and while he rose to stardom in his profession, for him the focus still was “about food, farms and taking care of people.”

Chef John Ash, founder of John Ash & Co. restaurant in Santa Rosa, met Peel and Silverton when they were students at Sonoma State University in the 1980s.

“They were such foodies, and they would come to my restaurant in Montgomery Village and we’d yak about the fact that Sonoma County needed more good restaurants than it had back then," said Ash, himself a trailblazer of Wine Country cuisine.

Ash said Peel had a “wicked sense of humor” and was “one of the most talented chefs and really ahead of his time in terms of that whole idea of using local ingredients.”

Ash enjoyed dining at Campanile, saying it was “so much fun” to go there to see his friend at the restaurant that was a Hollywood “it” spot until it closed in 2012. Also, Ash’s daughter worked there for several years.

Peel wrote or co-authored cookbooks such as “New Classic Family Dinners.” He and Silverton wrote “Mark Peel & Nancy Silverton At Home: Two Chefs Cook for Family and Friends” and “The Food of Campanile.”

Wolf said Peel’s latest food venture, before he was diagnosed with cancer earlier this month and died Sunday at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center, was a “seafood stall” at a market in the Los Angeles area.

“He wasn’t the guy who was always looking for attention. He was the guy who wanted to feed people really good food,” his daughter Vanessa Silverton-Peel told the Los Angeles Times. “I think he was so much more influential than he ever really took stock of.”

In addition to her, Peel is survived by four other children, Benjamin and Oliver Silverton-Peel and Vivien and Rex Peel.

Press Democrat Dining Editor Heather Irwin contributed to this report. You can reach Staff Writer Paul Bomberger at 707-521-5746 or paul.bomberger@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @BiznewsPaulB.