Appreciation: Mark Peel, 'the LeBron James of the grill,' an intellectually curious chef's chef

Mark Peel helped introduce countless Los Angeles diners to farm-to-table dining.

I think this attitude came from his restaurant beginnings, even before his transformative days with Wolfgang Puck at Ma Maison and Spago, with Alice Waters at Chez Panisse and with Michael McCarty and Jonathan Waxman at the rules-busting Michael’s in Santa Monica. He used to talk fondly of his time at the stove at Cindy’s, a Denny’s-style truck-stop coffee shop off the 60freeway not far from where it meets the 605 in El Monte.

Instead, I’m looking at a photograph our friend Anne Fishbein took of Mark Peel and Jonathan in our backyard as they triumphantly put the last piece in place of a ridiculously massive Weber kettle grill — the 37-inch ranch style that is overkill for all but the biggest crowds. Peel couldn’t stand that Jonathan, who freely admitted to his lack of mechanical prowess, might leave the grill unbuilt over the summer. In Peel’s world, no grill should go unused.

And no chef should be far from the stove. Over the weekend, Ruth Reichl was telling me about how she’d prematurely declared the end of the celebrity chef — in 1989 — and when I looked up the piece, I wasn’t surprised to find that Peel was one of her prime examples. “You’re talking to the wrong guy. I don’t want to be a celebrity chef,” he told her for the story. “It’s too much work — traveling all over, having your picture taken. It’s insidious. The danger is you stop paying attention to what you’re supposed to be doing — you stop thinking about cooking. And that’s why I got into this business in the first place. I can’t sing, I can’t dance, I can’t play the saxophone. But I really can cook. And that’s what I want to do.

Great piece. Thanks.

King Peel KingJames

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