In Memoriam: Chef Mark Peel

California's restaurant industry and The Collins College of Hospitality Management community lost a beloved family member. Acclaimed chef, restaurateur, and Cal Poly Pomona Distinguished Alumnus Mark Peel passed away on June 20, nine days after he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer, his daughter Vanessa Silverton-Peel told the Los Angeles Times. He was 66.

Survived by his wife, five children and two grandchildren, Chef Peel’s legacy will live on in his loved ones and all whom he graced with his food, talents, and teachings.

Peel the Protégé

Considered one of the founders of California cuisine, Peel started his career as a dishwasher in high school and went on to study hotel and restaurant management at Cal Poly Pomona where he always had one foot in the kitchen and one in the classroom.

“I still remember him as a young guy going to Pomona,” said Wolfgang Puck. “He started working for me on the weekends [and] then would come more and more.”

The alumnus honed his culinary chops in the 1970s and 1980s alongside Puck at Ma Maison and Spago, Alice Waters at Chez Panisse, and Jonathan Waxman at Michael's of Santa Monica and Maxwell's Plum of New York City.

Running Restaurants

In 1989, Peel and his former wife Nancy Silverton, a renowned chef in her own right, co-founded Campanile and La Brea Bakery. Campanile was a legendary landmark in Los Angeles for more than two decades earning instant and continual acclaim during its reign and received the James Beard Foundation award for Outstanding Restaurant in 2001. La Brea Bakery was sold in 2001 and is now a worldwide company.

Then in 2010, he opened The Tar Pit, an Art-Deco-style establishment focusing on hand-crafted cocktails. Finally, in a departure from fine dining in 2015, Peel launched Bombo, his first casual eatery in the historic Grand Central Market in Downtown Los Angeles, which he rebranded as Prawn Coastal in 2017. 

“I had the good fortune to work in some of the most formative restaurants in California cuisine,” said Peel during a 2017 TEDx Talk at Cal Poly Pomona. “I guess you could say in the culinary world I am an O.G.”

Outside the Kitchen

During his culinary career, Peel pioneered California cuisine and helped established Los Angeles’ premier dining scene. Between opening and owning four restaurants along the way, he wrote his own cookbook, New Classic Family Dinners, and co-authored two cookbooks with Silverton: Mark Peel & Nancy Silverton At Home: Two Chefs Cook for Family and Friends, and The Food of Campanile, and contributed to The Gamble House Cookbook. His frequent television appearances included: Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsay, Hell’s Kitchen, Knife Fight, Top Chef, Top Chef: Masters, and Top Chef: Just Desserts. As a highlight of his community involvement, Mark has supported St. Vincent’s Meals on Wheels for more than thirty years. 

Cal Poly Pomona Contributions

Peel's partnership with the university began in the early 1980s after meeting Dr. Bob Small for the first time while visiting Ma Maison to catch up with old friends in the kitchen. Small, faculty emeritus and founding dean of The Collins College of Hospitality Management, was doing a summer faculty internship at the iconic restaurant at the time. Through the years that followed, Small took his catering management classes to Spago and Campanile where Peel and his team prepared a culminating dining experience for students at the end of each school year.

“I've supported The Collins College over the years because I believe that education is a gift that brings an obligation,” said Peel. “I didn't pay full market value for my education, and so it's important for me to give back as my career advances because there are other people who are coming in my footsteps behind me you need the same gift that I got.

During the 1990s and 2000s, Peel was a leading chef for The Collins College of Hospitality Management's Harvest Auction dinners in honor of some of the industry's elite including Julia Child, Alice Waters, and Carol and Jim Collins, to name a few. The annual fundraising event, later called Harvest Celebration, continues to this day as Hospitality Uncorked.

In 2013, he was a celebrity tasting judge at Cal Poly Pomona’s sixth annual Southern California Tasting & Auction. Later in 2014, he was amongst a band of successful alumni guest chefs who prepared a celebratory wine dinner at The Restaurant at Kellogg Ranch for Cal Poly Pomona's 75th anniversary. He visited campus again in 2017 to speak at the university's TEDxCPP event.

Faith in Future Leaders

Chef Peel found fulfillment in teaching the next generation of great chefs while giving back to the community. As a longtime donor of Cal Poly Pomona who hired numerous graduates through the years, he trained some of the areas most talented chefs including 2005 alumnus Chad Colby, chef/owner of L.A. restaurants Antico and the newly opened Bali. Shortly after graduating and returning from a scholarship trip to Italy with little to no experience aside from what he picked up at The Restaurant at Kellogg Ranch as a student, Peel gave Colby his first break at Campanile.

“That trip really primed me to pursue a career in food,” Colby recalled. “Mark just cared that I had been to Italy. A lot of my career and food philosophy are a result of Mark. I had a lot of epiphanies at Campanile and learned a lot of technique there.” 

Belated Baccalaureate

Unbeknownst to most who knew him, Chef Peel left Cal Poly Pomona in 1977 without completing his senior project and did not finish his degree. Instead, he accepted the opportunity of a lifetime to work alongside Wolfgang Puck at Ma Maison. So in 2009, Associate Dean Michael Godfrey spearheaded a degree audit with Carolina Sanchez in the Registrar’s Office that led to one of our fondest memories with the late Chef Peel.

“To qualify for a bachelor’s degree in hospitality management at Cal Poly Pomona, current students must complete 800 hours of professional work experience,” explained Andy Feinstein, the program’s dean at the time. “Mark began his career more than 30 years ago. We figured a successful chef and owner such as Mark, works at least 12-hour days, six days a week, 51 weeks a year. A modest estimate clocks him in with more than 112,000 hours of work experience! I think he could join the faculty.”

What was supposed to be a typical dinner and auction, The Collins College of Hospitality Management's 2009 Harvest Celebration served as the perfect opportunity to surprise Peel with something that had been missing from his resume for many years – his bachelor’s degree.

Between the awards and auction, the university president and The Collins College of Hospitality Management's dean came on stage wearing puffy commencement gowns and velvet caps over their black-tie attire. Everyone in the audience did a double take while they played coy for a few moments allowing the suspense to grow.

“After a minute, I knew they were talking about me, so I started preparing what I would say. I was completely surprised,” said Peel.

In front of his peers and industry leaders, he was presented his long-overdue degree, handed a commencement gown and mortarboard, and sent on stage to give a speech on the fly. 

“What I think is special about The Collins College is the depth and breadth of the program,” he said. “It has evolved enormously since the time that I was there, and it was a very good program when I was there, but now the knowledge, the experience, and contacts that you can get through the college are unparalleled."