Jack’s Story

How PAZAZ™ Came To Be

I’ve been in the restaurant business most of my life. I started working at a French restaurant in Tiburon California (The Caprice) when I was very young. Years later, after college, I became a partner in a restaurant (Epanoui), also in Tiburon. While I was there, Epanoui was voted as one of the top ten restaurants in the entire country by Time-Life Books. Following that unique experience, I left California on a new culinary journey.

After working as a manager/maitre’d in south Florida (The Plum Room) I went to upstate New York and worked at L’uberge Du Cygne in Manlius New York. I heard of a chef in upstate New York with a famous reputation and that is when I went on a quest to work with one of the greatest chefs in the world. This is when I met and worked with chef Joel Chenet who had been the Chef at the French Consulate in Paris France and prepared food for the President of France.

Missing California and my family I traveled back home and got a job working as the lead captain at Amelio’s under executive chef Jackie Robert in San Francisco (check out New York Times article in 1987, “ FOOD; KNOWING NO BOUNDARY”).

I had the pleasure of working with chef Jackie Robert whom prepared one of the inaugural dinner’s for President Ronald Reagan. With that experience I then eventually became the General Manager at Masons in the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. After that I was in charge of all the restaurants at the Mark Hopkins Hotel on Nob Hill, including room service and the Top of the Mark.

Now I work for Chef Jean George Vongerichten in Las Vegas, and have decided to take my culinary expertise into the very products that help produce “World Class Cuisine”.

The Heavy Duty Aluminum Baking Sheet Pan, Non-Stick Baking Mat, and the Steel Mesh Cooling Rack are examples of my exhaustive search for quality merchandise. I had these products custom made to my specifications, with the knowledge I have attained over the years through my apprenticeship with world-class chefs and the focus associated with every aspect of the creation of a dish.

In the world of the culinary arts the tools that you use help produce the “Magic” associated with dishes that captivate the mind, stimulate the palate, and test the very boundaries of the “dining experience”. It is with this attention to detail and commitment to excellence that I bring you my brand, “PAZAZ”.