After enjoying 15 years celebrity as a top Napa Valley chef and trend-setting restaurateur, Michael Chiarello now hosts NapaStyle. Chiarello has been writing influential cookbooks and creating the NapaStyle line of specialty foods/home products since 1999. Devoted to sharing his vast insider’s knowledge with home cooks, he set out to make fine dining and entertaining easier and more enjoyable for his viewers and fans. In this fun, fascinating journey through "America’s Tuscany," Chiarello simplifies the art of great food, beverage pairing, artisan ingredients and extraordinary home entertaining.
Chiarello created NapaStyle, his own line of exclusive specialty foods and handcrafted products for kitchen, home and garden. These products reflect the Napa Valley’s love of food, wine, artisan quality and simple elegance, and can be found in the catalog and website NapaStyle Shop, which also offers recipes, menus and entertaining tips.
Chiarello was born in 1962 in Red Bluff, Calif. and raised in the Central California farm town of Turlock. His parents and grandparents are from Calabria (at the toe of Italy’s boot), and Calabrian culture and cuisine have always been very influential on him. His family was Northern California dairy ranchers, and most of his relatives were involved in growing the food they ate: as cheese makers, butchers, olive oil producers, winemakers or operators of food markets. His parents taught him to bake bread, make wine, cure prosciutto and cook in traditional Calabrian style. Because money was tight, the family table contained foods that members communally harvested or produced, along with mushrooms and wild greens for which they foraged.
As a young boy, Chiarello worked the land with his grandfather and at age 14 he apprenticed in local restaurant kitchens. He attended the prestigious Culinary Institute of America, graduating in 1982. Then he studied hospitality management at Florida International University, graduating with a B.A. in 1984. Chiarello spent time in Italy and then, in 1985, opened The Grand Bay Hotel, in Coconut Grove, Fla., in partnership with Italy’s CHIGA Group. He also opened, as Executive Chef, Toby’s Bar and Grill, which specialized in new American cuisine. That year, 23-year-old Chiarello was honored as Chef of the Year by Food and Wine magazine.
In the mid-80s, Chiarello moved to the Napa Valley and co-founded the Tra Vigne restaurant, creating its distinctive Calabrian-influenced cuisine, featuring his many imaginative signature dishes, created from seasonal Napa Valley foodstuffs. Over the next 15 years, the restaurant rose to legendary status, drawing tourists from all over the world and becoming a favorite with Napa Valley diners.
Chiarello, 41, has twice been honored as Chef of the Year and his books and signature products have also won prestigious awards. He has founded and/or served as Executive Chef at 15 leading Western restaurants, including Tra Vigne and Tomatina in California’s Napa Valley; Caffe Museo in San Francisco; Ajax Tavern and Bump’s in Aspen, Colo. and Bistecca in Scottsdale, Ariz. This California native hosted the highly rated PBS series Season by Season (2000), Michael Chiarello’s Napa (2001) and Michael Chiarello’s Napa: Casual Cooking (2002).
"Tapping his expertise as a celebrity chef with a ground-breaking restaurant, Michael is intent on making sure you understand how to do extraordinary things," said Steve Kroopnick, executive producer of NapaStyle. "Michael conveys information beautifully: with enthusiasm, humor and clarity. And he keeps coming up with information that most people don’t know—like why a certain type of wine glass can alter the taste of wine, or how simple, inexpensive antiques can enhance the look of your kitchen."
Visit Michael's website for more information.
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