Gordon Hamersley facts for kids
Gordon Hamersley is a famous American chef who lives in Boston. He is also an author who writes cookbooks. Many people say his roast chicken recipe is the best he has ever made! He even cooked it for the legendary chef Julia Child on her TV show, In Julia's Kitchen with Master Chefs. A fun fact about Gordon is that he almost always wears a Red Sox baseball cap.
He wrote a book called Bistro Cooking At Home with Joanne McAllister Smart. This book won a special award in 2004 from the International Association of Culinary Professionals for being one of the best cookbooks by chefs and restaurants.
Gordon Hamersley's Journey as a Chef
Gordon Hamersley started his cooking journey in the 1970s. He went to Boston University and learned a lot at French restaurants around Boston. By 1979, he moved to Los Angeles. There, he worked at a famous restaurant called Ma Maison with the well-known chef Wolfgang Puck.
In 1982, Gordon and his wife, Fiona, moved to Nice, France. They spent time exploring French food and culture. A year later, they came back to Boston. Gordon got a job with chef Lydia Shire at Boston's Copley Plaza Hotel.
Four years later, in 1987, Gordon and Fiona opened their own restaurant called Hamersley's Bistro. It was located on Tremont Street and served delicious French cuisine.
When asked who taught him the most about cooking, Gordon shared some interesting stories:
The chef who influenced me most when I was young was Claude Segal. He worked at Ma Maison after Wolfgang Puck. Claude was amazing at making simple French country food. He showed me how satisfying it was to cook and eat simple, elegant dishes. Wolfgang Puck taught me how to cook for very important people. Working with Lydia Shire was a lot of fun! I also admired Andre Soltner, who owned Lutece in New York. Soltner taught me that as a chef and owner, I should always be in the kitchen, cooking every night. But I think Julia Child taught me the most. She told me to always trust my own ideas and not just follow new trends. In the early days of Hamersley’s Bistro, she would sometimes call me the morning after eating at my restaurant. She would give me ideas on how to make things even better. It was very motivating to get advice from Julia Child!
Hamersley's Bistro closed its doors at the end of October 2014. After that, in January 2015, Gordon Hamersley started writing a food column for The Boston Globe newspaper. He also became a columnist for a quarterly magazine called Upland Almanac in its Spring 2014 issue.
Awards and Special Recognition
Hamersley's Bistro became very popular and received many great reviews. Food & Wine magazine even named Gordon one of the "Ten Best New Chefs for 1988."
From 1988 to 1993, he was nominated for the James Beard Foundation Award, which is a very important award in the food world. He finally won it in 1995! A year later, his restaurant was given a "Hall of Fame" award by Boston magazine. From 1988 to 1995, his bistro was ranked as the Best of Boston. In 1997, The Boston Globe gave his restaurant a top four-star rating. Today, Gordon Hamersley is a member of the New England Culinary Institute's board of advisors.
