Gaby Maeda, State Bird Provisions, featuring Hodo
Saturday, April 20, 2019, 12:00 pm - 12:45 pm
Stop by the CUESA Classroom for a cooking demo featuring the seasonal bounty of the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, and highlighting a chef-producer relationship forged at the market.
Gaby Maeda grew up in Honolulu, Hawaii where she had exposure to several different types of cuisine. She spent two years cooking at Hiroshi’s Eurasion Tapas in Honolulu where she realized that cooking was what she wanted to pursue in life. The parallels in diversity between Hawaii and the Bay Area made San Francisco the obvious choice for her next destination. Added to that, the plethora of amazing farms, ranches, vineyards and seafood makes San Francisco any young chef’s dream city to cook in. Following her graduation from the California Culinary Academy in 2009 Gaby accepted an extermship at Restaurant Gary Danko. Over the next five years of working on the line she established a foundation of culinary technique and skill. In 2014 she accepted a job as a line cook at State Bird Provisions and she has worked her way up through the ranks to Chef de Cuisine. Under the guidance of chefs Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski, she was taught how to taste food in ways that were new to her, create flavors that were a blend of what she knew from her upbringing and their evolved Californian cuisine, build strong relationships with local purveyors and, most importantly, treat your staff with respect.
As a child in Vietnam, Minh Tsai took morning strolls with his grandpa to the neighborhood tofu shack. The freshness and artisan-quality of the soymilk, tofu, and yuba of his childhood eluded Minh for many years and ultimately led Minh to leave a finance career to found Hodo in 2004. Hodo now supplies tofu to Chipotle nationwide, sweetgreen, and notable Bay Area restaurants including The Slanted Door, State Bird Provisions, The Progress, SHED Cafe at Healdsburg Shed, and Mister Jiu’s.
All demos take place in the CUESA Classroom (under the tents in front of the Ferry Building) and are free to the public, with recipes and samples for all.