Ben Ford

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

Chef Ben Ford officially earned his cooking stripes at some of the country’s most established restaurants and alongside several of America’s most treasured culinary icons before taking on his own restaurant kitchen and earning the prestigious Cochon555 award. Today, he has two successful Ford’s Filling Stations located in Culver City and the Delta Terminal at LAX, with a third location opening in fall 2014 at the JW Marriott in downtown Los Angeles. The restaurant’s local and seasonal high-end California-Mediterranean menu has earned him rave reviews and national acclaim, including a coveted three stars from the Los Angeles Times, one of the first restaurants in Los Angeles to receive this high rating.

In May 2014, Ben released his first cookbook, Taming the Feast: Ben Ford’s Field Guide to Adventurous Cooking, which focuses not only on bringing people together to eat good, sustainable organic food, but gathering lots of people together to eat sumptuous feasts.

A nod to his mother’s culinary influence and father’s craftsmanship, Ben adopted the ability to create with his hands, a skill that eventually found its way into his cooking.

Ben graduated from the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco where he was schooled in the ethos of using local seasonal ingredients by the country’s most prolific organic chef, Alice Waters, at the famed Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California. He returned to Los Angeles and honed his traditional French-cooking techniques as Sous Chef at Eberhard Mueller’s Opus in Santa Monica. After tenures at two seminal Los Angeles restaurants, Campanile and Eclipse, Ben was named Executive Chef and created the concept for The Farm of Beverly Hills.

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Chef's Tricks of the Trade: Chef Fest 2014

A snapshot into the Four Seasons Hualalai Food & Wine festival, Chef Fest 2014, featuring over half-a-dozen celebrity chefs, and Tealeaves ICONS. The event featured interactive cooking classes, high-profile wining and dining, and an array of innovative dishes inspired by local produce, the Tealeaves luxury tea blends, and the chef icons' global backgrounds in culinary. Part of the Four Seasons Food & Wine Global series, this year's magnificent beachside setting made for a picturesque backdrop filled with tantalizing tastes, world-acclaimed chefs, and regarded culinary partners in wine, tea, and spirits.