Chef Olivier Said

• Co-founder/Co-Chef - Kitchen on Fire
• Co-Host/Executive Producer - "Mastering Knife Skills" DVD
• Author - CESAR: Recipes from a Tapas Bar - Published by Ten Speed Press in Oct 2003
• THE BAR: A Spirited Guide to Cocktail Alchemy - Published by Ten Speed Press in Aug 2005

The former co-owner and bar manager of Berkeley's acclaimed Cesar Tapas Bar, Said is one of the Bay Area's most respected culinary personalities.  Born and raised in France, he is the descendant of at least five generations of restaurateurs dating back to the early 1800s.  Said began his career at the age of 15 in his mother's Paris restaurant. He moved to Los Angeles in the early 1980s and worked at Ken Frank's La Toque, one of the first restaurants in the country to feature California nouvelle cuisine.  In 1987, Said returned to Paris and opened his own restaurant, the very popular Texas Coyote, which included three sprawling bars and a night club.  It had frequent reviews in the press such as Gault Millau, Vogue, Le Point, Le Nouvel Observateur, Le Monde, Paris Capital magazine, Liberation and Marie Claire.  Additionally, Said was a regular guest host on the #2 national radio station in France, Skyrock, live from his restaurant.

After returning to the States in the late 1990s, he joined the management team at Berkeley's Cesar Tapas Bar, founded by three Chez Panisse alumni. The restaurant was an instant hit with both Berkeley food lovers and restaurant critics who raved about its unique Spanish-inspired menu and world-class wine-and-spirits list.  The San Francisco Food Lover's Guide hailed it as "one of the greatest bars in the world in terms of quality of spirits, selection, and mixology."  Among other accolades, it was voted one of the best restaurants in the Bay Area by the San Francisco Chronicle for eight years in a row, and featured in such national publications as Gourmet magazine.

Except for when he ran away to join the circus, he spent his entire working life in the restaurant business.  In that time, he has had every job description within a restaurant, starting as dishwasher and working all the way up to a owner, in establishments ranging from a pizzeria to 4-star, white tablecloth restaurants. He has managed other people's restaurants and two of his own.  Once, within the space of a year, he went from owning the hottest club in Paris to working in a taco stand for $40 a day.  Trust him, things can always be worse; you just have to find the fun and fortune in whatever it is that you are doing at that moment, right?