Joey Altman

Joey Altman is a San Francisco based Chef who wears many hats. Television Host, Cookbook Author, Restaurant Consultant, Food & Wine Educator, and Public Speaker.Currently, Altman is the executive chef for San Francisco’s iconic and venerable seafood waterfront restaurant and bar Pier 23 Café on the Embarcadero.

Altman is a classically trained chef with an AAS degree in hotel restaurant management. Upon his graduation, Altman went to France and staged in a number of Michelin starred restaurants for 6 months and returned to the states to work with a number of the country’s top chefs including Bob Kincaid at The Harvest in Cambridge MA, Emeril Lagasse at Commander’s Palace and Jeremiah Tower at Stars. He also worked for legendary rock concert impresario Bill Graham cooking backstage for people like Sting, Eric Clapton and the Grateful Dead.

In 1989 Altman was catapulted to the forefront of the highly competitive Bay Area restaurant scene with the opening of his first restaurant Miss Pearl’s Jam House. The restaurant was wildly popular and caught the attention of food writers nationwide with its bright flavors and exciting and spicy combinations of exotic and colorful foods.

Then In 1998, Altman launched Bay Café, a food-magazine television show. Bay Cafe provides food and wine enthusiasts with an insider’s look at the Bay Area’s rich and diverse culinary scene. While it quickly became a Bay Area favorite food show, after its first season Bay Cafe has been recognized 3 times by the prestigious James Beard Foundation with food world's equivalent to The Oscar's, The James Beard Award for Best Local Cooking Series in 2000. It went on to win the award again in 2001 and 2006. In addition to local television, Altman also hosted two series for the Television Food Network, “Appetite for Adventure,” a show where gourmet cooking meets the great outdoors and “Tasting Napa” a culinary travelogue through Northern California’s wine country.

In 2008 Wiley & Sons published Altman’s cookbook Without Reservations: how to make Bold, Creative, Flavorful Food at Home. It was inspired by his experience hosting his cooking TV show Bay Cafe. With so many recipe requests from viewers, he decided to put together a collection of his favorite restaurant-worthy recipes and distilled them down making it possible for people to make them in their own kitchen without the need to spend hours in the kitchen or much money at the store.

In 2011 Altman, along with his chef cousin Alex Sanchez, opened an award-winning restaurant in Mumbai India called the Table. The Table was voted best restaurant in Mumbai in it’s first year opened. In 2017 Altman was the Culinary Operations Director for opening of China Live.