Todd English - Biography

Last Editor: yukari_imamoto				Todd English Biography -   Name : Todd English Profession : celebrity chef Birth Details : born 1960

Todd English Trivia -

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Todd English Detailed Biography -

William Todd English (born 1960) is a celebrity chef based in Boston, Massachusetts. He is best known for his cooking show, "Cooking With Todd English," which appears on public television and is produced by Connecticut Public Television; and for his flagship restaurant, Olives, located in Charlestown, Massachusetts. English was born in Amarillo, Texas and grew up in Sandy Springs, Georgia. He matriculated at Guilford College in North Carolina on a baseball scholarship, but quit and entered the Culinary Institute of America at the age of 20 and graduated in 1982. He worked under Jean-Jacques Rachou at New York’s La Cote Basque, and then moved to Italy to work at several restaurants there. He returned to the United States at age 25 and served as the Executive Chef of the Italian restaurant Michela’s in Cambridge, Massachusetts for three years before opening the original Olives restaurant in 1989. In 1998, English partnered with Boston developer James Cafarelli to form The Olive Group, aimed at developing new restaurant properties using English's name and celebrity status. (The new corporation did not include English's existing restaurants.) Although the venture was successful in getting new restaurants off the ground, reviews for some new properties were tepid, and English's existing restaurants began to suffer, culminating in the closure of Olives in 2002 for health department violations. In June, 2002, Cafarelli sued English for non-payment of salary and deferred compensation; on the same day, a major Olive Group creditor also filed suit over the terms of one of its loans. The suit with Cafarelli was eventually settled, with Cafarelli gaining control of one of the group's restaurants, Rustic Kitchen, in Boston's Faneuil Hall Marketplace. English has been married once, to Olivia English, but they are divorced. They have three children, named Oliver, Isabelle, and Simon. Olives English's flagship restaurant, Olives, opened in Charlestown in April of 1989. The restaurant's name is a tribute to his then-wife, Olivia. The food is "rustic Mediterranean," with a strong influence from Italian cuisine. The restaurant was named Best New Restaurant by Boston magazine, and has been has been honored as Best Food and Top Table by Gourmet magazine. Olives is known for two signature desserts - a molten chocolate cake and a vanilla bean soufflé - which must be ordered with the main meal. Olives now has locations in Union Square, New York City; the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas; Washington, DC; Aspen, Colorado; and Tokyo. Figs Figs is a small chain of high-end pizzerias in the Boston area, with two additional locations at LaGuardia Airport in Queens, New York. Figs offers authentic, Neapolitan-style pizzas with very thin crusts, served on inverted sheet pans, as well as salads and pastas. Figs won the "Hot Concept" award from Nation’s Restaurant News magazine. Other restaurants English's other restaurants include: Tuscany, an Italian restaurant at the Mohegan Sun resort in Uncasville, Connecticut Kingfish Hall, a seafood restaurant at Faneuil Hall Marketplace in downtown Boston Bonfire, a steakhouse at the Park Plaza hotel in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston Fish Club, a seafood restaurant in Seattle Todd English, a restaurant on the Queen Mary 2 BlueZoo, a restaurant at the Dolphin Hotel at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida English has also been involved in several restaurants that no longer exist (Isola, on Martha's Vineyard)