Erik Anderson obituary Ex-award-winning chef from Sonoma County, Nashville, San Francisco, and Florida has passed away. This week, Chef Erik Anderson died suddenly after a medical incident. Erik Anderson has left the recently opened Four Seasons Napa Valley in Calistoga’s Truss Restaurant and Bar to become a member of the Michelin-starred Barndiva in Healdsburg. Before Anderson took over as CEO of Truss, he was Executive Chef at the avant-garde and critically regarded Coi restaurant in San Francisco, which had a two-star rating. Before that, he was a founding co-chef at Catbird Seat in Nashville. He has a long career that includes working at some of the best restaurants in the world, including the French Laundry in Yountville, the three-star Noma restaurant in Copenhagen (voted the “best restaurant in the world” in 2021), and a number of other well-known eateries.
Anderson, who started working at the Healdsburg restaurant before to the 2020 pandemic, will succeed Jordan Rosas as the new Executive Chef at Barndiva. In 2021, Rosas and Executive Pastry Chef Neidy Venegas led Barndiva to its first Michelin star. In addition, Barndiva just hired a number of new employees after a brief shutdown during the winter. The restaurant will welcome talented mixologist Scott Beattie as the Beverage Director. He had held a long-term employment at Meadowood in St. Helena and had previously worked at Montage Healdsburg. The Delfina Restaurant Group member Sally Kim has been assigned to manage Barndiva’s wine selection.
Neidy Venegas, the executive pastry chef, will also improve the restaurant’s bread and viennoiserie offerings. Chef Erik Anderson, who took over as head of the critically regarded Coi restaurant in San Francisco recently, grew up in a household where he was exposed to the culinary arts.
Raised in a setting that exposed him to the culinary arts, Erik Anderson is the recently appointed chef of San Francisco’s renowned Coi restaurant, which has three Michelin stars. In Chicago, where Erik was born and raised, his parents owned and operated a restaurant. As such, Erik was raised mostly within their facility throughout his early years. This is when his passion for trying out new dishes and cooking methods was found, and it was here that his culinary career began. Since then, Erik’s career in cooking has taken off, and he has developed a unique cooking style that blends his wide range of expertise and creative spirit.
Beginning in 2006, Anderson had his first professional training in the hospitality industry as a chef at Chef Thomas Keller’s renowned three-star restaurant, The French Laundry, in Yountville, California. After that, Anderson moved to Minneapolis and started working as a sous chef at Auriga, where he was supervised by Doug Flicker, whom he now considers to be his mentor. After working at Flicker for three years, Anderson left Auriga to work at Porter & Frye at Hotel Ivy. He started off as a member of the restaurant’s opening crew and ultimately rose to the rank of chef de cuisine.
Anderson brought his creativity to Tim McKee’s Sea Change Restaurant & Bar as chef de cuisine after leaving Porter & Frye in 2009. He developed recipes here with an emphasis on using sustainable fish and fresh ingredients. Due to the widespread acclaim that his outstanding cooking at Sea Change received, Anderson was named a finalist for Food & Wine Magazine’s “People’s Best New Chef Midwest” and nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award. For Anderson, receiving this recognition was the pinnacle of his career.
After working at Copenhagen’s famed Noma restaurant, Anderson relocated to Nashville and took over as head chef at The Catbird Seat, which is now regarded as one of the country’s most avant-garde eateries. Erik demonstrated a fourteen-course tasting menu at the Catbird Seat that was presented in a fun, participatory way. After receiving a great deal of attention for his cooking, Anderson was named one of Food & Wine’s “Best New Chefs” in 2012.
The next year, Food & Wine named him the “Best New Chef All Star,” a distinction that honored an exceptional person from each of the preceding 25 years’ classes. Furthermore, The Catbird Seat achieved accolades under Erik’s direction, including being included among the “Top Ten Best New Restaurants in America” by GQ Magazine and among the “Best New Restaurants in America” by Bon Appétit. In addition, Time Magazine and the New York Times both mentioned the eatery. Anderson has appeared on a number of television programs, such as Vice’s Munchies, PBS’s The Mind of a Chef, and Bizarre Food with Andrew Zimmern.
Erik returned to Minneapolis with the goal of refurbishing the Grand Café, a 70-year-old establishment that serves popular French cuisine in the neighborhood. He was not really enthusiastic about making this kind of meal, even if he liked to eat it. Consequently, Anderson jumped at the chance to take over as chief chef at Daniel Patterson’s Coi in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood in place of Matthew Kirkley in order to provide the fine food he was so passionate about. The multi-course tasting menu that Erik, the restaurant’s current chef, offers highlights dishes that change with the seasons. Pressed pigeon, fois gras tart, and Dungeness crab terrine are a few noteworthy examples. To prepare these delicacies, Erik uses his cherished 120-year-old duck press.
