Commis

James Syhabout

Chef and owner of Commis, born in northeast Thailand and raised in Oakland. He graduated the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco in 1999 and worked his way through some of the best kitchens in the world — El Bulli under Ferran Adria, Coi under Daniel Patterson, and chef de cuisine at Manresa under David Kinch — before opening Commis in Temescal in 2009, which earned a Michelin star its debut year and now holds two, the only restaurant in Oakland to carry one at all. Food & Wine named him a Best New Chef in 2010. His cooking runs French technique through the Isan Thai and Lao flavors of his family's home region rather than a straight New American register; he also opened Hawker Fare (Oakland 2011, SF 2015) around that same food, and wrote it up in his memoir/cookbook 'Hawker Fare: Stories & Recipes from a Refugee Chef's Isan Thai & Lao Roots.' Tonight's tasting menu at Commis leaned hard into that Thai-and-Chinese register.