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About Chef Michael DeMaria
Chef Michael DeMaria is renowned throughout
the Phoenix Metropolitan region and beyond
for his inventive and superior culinary
American and Italian contemporary cuisine.
Chef Michael was trained by the superior
chefs at the five-star Arizona Biltmore. His
dynamic background includes teaching
culinary arts at the California Culinary
Academy in
San Francisco, and working at well-known
destinations such as San Francisco’s
Ritz-Carlton, Phoenix’s famous Royal
Palms Hotel and Lon’s at the Hermosa
Inn, the Wilshire Country Club in
Los Angeles and Westin Hotel Corporation. In 1992, Chef
Michael was selected as one of 25 chefs to
comprise Team U.S.A., which represented the
United States in the Culinary Olympics in
Frankfurt, Germany.
For the past
decade, 1997-2007, Chef Michael and his
business partners, Brandon Maxwell and
Harlan Berman, operated
locally acclaimed Michael’s at the
Citadel in the high Sonoran Desert of
North Scottsdale. The restaurant reflected
Chef Michael’s culinary style, a culmination
of his years of creative cooking.
The cuisine was inspired contemporary
American with Italian influences.
His namesake restaurant received
recognitions such as the AAA 4-Diamond
award, Mobil 3-star award and the Zagat
Survey’s “extraordinary.”
Chef
Michael and Brandon Maxwell formed a unique
partnership with Avenue Communities, LLC –
which designs and develops innovative living
communities with a strong focus on unique
lifestyle considerations – to open their
signature contemporary Italian restaurant,
Trattoria M, and market and café,
Centro, in Spring 2008 in 6,500
square-feet of the plaza level of the much
anticipated Centerpoint Condominiums in
Tempe’s Mill District.
With an
uncanny vision and drive, Chef Michael is
also taking on new ventures in Park City,
Utah. He will open a second Trattoria M
in 2008,
unveil a new restaurant featuring his
signature organic American Regional cuisine
in Fall 2007 called 6 Spoons, and has
yet another restaurant in the works that
promises to be a sophisticated and
cutting-edge restaurant featuring
contemporary fare. Chef Michael is also
starting up a satellite catering
company in
Park City in
conjunction with his highly successful
catering company, Michael’s Catering,
which is
Phoenix’s
largest catering establishment with 175
seasonal full time staff and another 250
part time. Michael’s Catering
operates out of a 36,000
square-foot commissary kitchen and is
a
chef-driven concept serving world
cuisine to parties of 8 to 8,000. Since
opening in 2000, Michael’s Catering
has grown a remarkable 25-50% each year.
One of Chef
Michael’s largest annual catering events is
the FBR Open that he has catered since
1999. During the FBR Open, Michael’s
commissary kitchen runs 22 hours per day for
seven days to prepare food for more than
18,000 people per day in three remote,
on-course kitchens, and five satellite
kitchens with a staff of nearly 800
employees.
Embracing all
opportunities, Chef Michael is also working
on a television pilot highlighting
Michael’s Catering that will showcase
the fast-paced and demanding operations of
his commissary kitchen at prominent
Phoenix-metropolitan events.
Although no
doubt busy, Chef Michael escapes once a
month for eight months out of the year on
fly fishing trips, a hobby he has enjoyed
since he was a boy. He catches (and
releases) the
world’s finest, largest and most
beautiful trout and game fish. Chef Michael
has a collection of more than 5,000 flies
and 30 different rods and reels that are all
custom Abel anodized resembling different
fish of the world.
Chef Michael
continues to receive awards such as Wine
Spectator Magazine 2001-2006 Award of
Excellence; Phoenix Home & Garden
2002 “Master of the Southwest” Master Chef;
New Times “Best of Phoenix”; Arizona
Culinary Hall of Fame Inductee 2002; as well
as several Phoenix Magazine’s “Best of
the Valley” recognition awards.
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