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internship, in one of the chef's restaurants in New Orleans. He later did a stage at the late Charlie Trotter's eponymous restaurant (now closed) in Chicago. Along the way, his mentors encouraged him to pursue a culinary career. So with that prized experience in his pocket, Accarrino went off to the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, New York. After graduating from the CIA, he returned to school to earn a B.A. in hospitality and soon thereafter moved to New York City to try his luck in the big leagues. Tere, he worked with celebrated chefs Charlie Palmer, Todd English, Tom Colicchio (before Top Chef), and Tomas Keller (Accarrino was part of the opening team at Keller's three-star New York restaurant, Per Se). Eventually, Chef Matthew ended up in Los Angeles, where he opened Craft and Craftbar for Col- icchio. From there, it was a short hop to San Fran- cisco, where, in 2009, he was hired to preside over the kitchen at ffty-seat SPQR in the Pacifc Heights neighborhood. "We loved Matthew's creativity, vi- sion, and talent," crows SPQR owner and wine director, Shelley Lindgren. "I think of him as part scientist, part chef, and part artist." In 2013, Accarrino won his frst Mi- chelin star. "Having a star is emblem- atic of my hard work paying off," he says. "It's a wonderful achievement, but it's also a responsibility to con- MATTHEW ACCARRINO'S LIFE IS A study in perseverance. Indeed, it is a quality he claims defnes him as a person; as the executive chef at SPQR in San Francisco, which just won a coveted Michelin star for the second year running, he has endured his share of hard knocks. As a boy, Accarrino set his sights on being a professional cyclist. However, an accident playing Frisbee when he was sixteen derailed his cycling aspirations. When he landed from a jump to catch a Frisbee, Accarrino's leg shattered. It turned out he had a benign tumor in his leg, and he ended up in the hospital for two months after doctors used bone from his hip as well as coral to reconstruct his limb. After the surgery, he couldn't bear weight on the leg for two years, and had to learn to walk again. To keep from being bored while he was laid up recovering, the nascent chef began watching cooking shows on television. He watched Jacques Pépin, Julia Child, and Emeril Lagasse—"in the days," he notes with a smile, "before Emeril was comfortable in front of a camera." Eventually, he wrote to Lagasse and was invited to do a stage, or V I G N E T T E S A Star for Perseverance Chef Mathew Accarrino rides away with good taste by M. Linda Lee photograph by Sara Remington 32 _ Holiday 2014 Tempus-Magazine.com tinue to set high standards. I tell my staff that every dinner service is like the Super Bowl—no one meal is less important than another." It was in San Francisco that the chef fnally started riding his bike again (it was so painful to ride with his injured leg that he had put his bike away for ten years). Tere's that perseverance again, which comes into play in both cycling and cooking. In both endeavors, he claims, you need to function as part of a team, but you can still distinguish yourself as an individual. When he's not in the kitchen or on his bike, Accarrino has taken up farming, as a way to inspire himself and to learn about his ingredients. A wisdom beyond his thirty-seven years lights up Accarrino's warm brown eyes as he talks about his philosophy of cooking. "It's about capturing a particular mo- ment of place and season," he explains. "It's the ability to create an experience for diners that transcends the food on the plate." Te chef, whose family has roots in the Puglia region of Italy, has a nostalgia for his Italian heritage, yet is not confned by it. He enjoys disassembling Asian or other culinary techniques and refocusing them in his own cuisine. Examples of this are the miso he ferments using Italian beans whose seeds he brought back from Italy, and the tabbouleh he makes with carrot tops instead of parsley. "It's the small things that make food amazing," Accarrino notes. "Te difference between a good chef and a great chef is in the details." For Matthew Accarrino, there is never a fnite moment in cooking. "I focus on constantly evolving and im- proving, and I want the quality of my work to speak for itself," declares the stellar chef. "I'll always be satisfed if that's how I'm perceived." S TA R C H E F CHEF ACCARRINO WAS NAMED BY FOOD & WINE MAGAZINE AS BEST CHEF 2014. Squid Ink Linguine prepared by Chef Accarrino FOOD IMAGE: REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION FROM SPQR: MODERN ITALIAN FOOD AND WINE, BY SHELLEY LINDGREN AND MATTHEW ACCARRINO WITH KATE LEAHY, COPYRIGHT © 2012. PUBLISHED BY TEN SPEED PRESS, A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC.