Michael Mina
Egyptian-American chef, restaurateur and cookbook author
Biography
Michael Mina (born in Cairo in 1969) is a chef, restaurateur and cookbook author of Egyptian birth and American nationality. He is best known for fine dining in San Francisco and Las Vegas, and for building a restaurant group with dozens of venues around the world.
He immigrated to the United States as a child and grew up in Ellensburg, Washington. At sixteen he started working in a French kitchen in his hometown. He then spent a year at the University of Washington, where he worked in the restaurant at the Space Needle, before training at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.
After stints in New York and at the Bel Air Hotel in Los Angeles, he followed George Morrone to San Francisco to help launch Aqua, and took over its kitchen when Morrone left. In 2002 he teamed up with tennis player Andre Agassi to form The Mina Group, which has driven a wide range of restaurant concepts. His namesake San Francisco restaurant earned two Michelin stars in 2006, lost its rating for a time and later regained one.
Today he leads his flagship restaurants and works on media projects in digital formats and television.
Key contributions
- A cooking approach built on balancing four basic elements: spice, sweetness, acidity and richness.
- Michael Mina restaurant in San Francisco, awarded two Michelin stars in 2006 and a reference for Bay Area fine dining.
- The Mina Group, a company operating more than forty restaurants worldwide.
- RN74 in San Francisco, opened in 2009 and named after Route Nationale 74, the road that runs through Burgundy.
- Michael Mina: The Cookbook (2006), his first cookbook, built around his "Trio concept".
- Cook Taste Eat (2012), a digital culinary media project with daily emails and videos.