ZOLA CHEF GUILLAUME BIENAIME’S TASTE OF THE VALLEY
Chef Guillaume Bienaime go-tos for food, drink, fun
When Guillaume Bienaime was 15, he took his first restaurant job, washing dishes at a pizza joint in Pennsylvania. From the get-go, the energy and esprit de corps hooked him.
“They let me drink beer and made me feel like I was older than I was,’’ he says. “It was a lot of fun.’’
Twenty years later, at his own restaurant, Zola in downtown Palo Alto, it still is. Bienaime may have been born in France and raised in the Bay Area, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, but when it came time to open his charming French bistro named for French novelist and playwright Emile Zola, he knew he wanted it to be here. Since 1999, he’s lived and worked on the Peninsula, as executive chef for two years of the elegant Marche in Menlo Park, and for a year at Portola Kitchen in Portola Valley. All the while, he’s grown to love the region’s temperate weather, outdoorsy nature and worldly diners.
“I didn’t want to commute just to have a restaurant in San Francisco,” says Bienaime, 35, executive chefowner, who lives in Menlo Park. “It’s more challenging in the city because there’s more competition. But it’s also challenging here because we’re trying to do something that few are doing — be a neighborhood, chefrun restaurant with city sensibilities.’’
In fact, when the 46-seat establishment opened 2½ years ago to serve roasted bone marrow, short-rib Bourguignon and chocolate mousse with a flourish of coffee gel, he had doubters that a small, personal restaurant like this would succeed. He more than proved them wrong, even garnering a Michelin Bib Gourmand distinction for simple, skillful and affordable cooking.
“It’s been better than I expected,” he says. “It’s busy all the time.’’
Even so, when Bienaime does get free time, he likes nothing better than to explore some of his favorite haunts in Silicon Valley.