Ari taymor biography

Born and raised in New Jersey with no knowledge of the food world, I found myself falling in love with the farmers markets in the Bay Area and paying close.
He studied international affairs at George Washington University.
Ari Taymor was living a young cook's dream in 2014.

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(Originally published November 16, 2012 on Examiner.com).

NOTE: Despite awards and accolades, the original stand alone location of Alma closed in the fall of 2015. This article was written well before that. But even though some details of this article are now dated, Ari’s culinary journey hasn’t changed, that journey has just continued to grow (despite the trials and tribulations).

Not often does a chef’s food remind one of a graduate semiotics course, but to understand Ari Taymor’s plates at Alma Restaurant (at 952 S. Broadway in downtown Los Angeles) literary analysis seems apropos to grasp this chef’s authorial intent. Though when eating off of each plate, there may be a tendency to dissemble it in order to savor the intense flavors separately, the intent of the cuisine seems not so much a lesson in deconstruction, as it is one in decoding, recoding and re-associating not words but flavors and textures made with both familiar and unexpected ingredients, herbs and seasonings.Thus understanding Taymor’s cooking is not an exercise in categorization, but rather

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I'm a Chef Who Walked Away From a Dream Restaurant. Here's Why

Ari Taymor abandoned a new restaurant for a more balanced life.; Credit: Anne Fishbein

A few weeks ago, I walked away from opening a new restaurant. Everything about it was perfect. The location was dreamy: beautiful, quiet but close to everything. The investors were young, creative and enthusiastic. The creative team was incredible: designers, builders and craftspeople who have inspired me for a long time. The problem was me.

As young cooks, we want to make our impact fast. The media spur this on — best new chef, best new restaurant, rising star. We feel a pressure to compete, to be the youngest and the first. We push ourselves through 90-hour weeks, we leave family and friends behind for unpaid stages in far-flung corners of the world. We push our bodies and our minds as far as they can go. We sacrifice. We are so focused and single-minded that anyone who doesn't share that passion seems like an alien. We grocery shop, drive and talk the way we cook: fast and efficient, a mantra propelling us for

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chapter one:

How has it been transitioning Alma from a stand-alone restaurant to a residency at The Standard?

We started as a pop-up and our initial existence was impermanent, even as a permanent restaurant, because we never had investors or financial backing. We were literally week-to-week from day one. It was a miracle that we made it through our first year and then three-and-a-half years without a single investor. It was shocking to us.

Even when we were very impermanent in the beginning, my background was restaurants, and I still respected the restaurant experience and the fact that people spend their money here—I don’t take that lightly at all. So we always approached everything in a very professional environment from day one.

How has the food changed with the move?

It’s not a tasting menu anymore, but the same things we did downtown inform it. I don’t think we could have gotten the food to where it is without having gone through that evolution. It taught us where we can and can’t push and how to better run a business that’s informed by comfort and crea