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Chef Michael Rossi

Chef Michael Rossi is a Southern California chef with more than 30 years in professional kitchens, Executive Chef of The Beach Club in Santa Monica, and creator of SEASON. Now he writes one week of dinners at a time, for people who are not chefs and do not want to be.

The 5:30 problem

Somewhere around 5:30 on a Tuesday, a decision has to get made. The fridge is full and none of it adds up to dinner. Everybody is tired. The takeout app is right there.

I have spent my whole career on the line, and this is still the thing people ask me about most. It is not a cooking problem. It is a planning problem.

Where the cooking comes from

It started at my grandmother's kitchen table. She would make thirty hand-made pizzas in a night for family and friends, and I would sit there and watch, and eat one straight out of the oven.

I trained at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco, then earned a Master's in Italian Cuisine and Oenology from the Italian Culinary Institute for Foreigners and stayed in Italy to cook in Michelin-starred kitchens - two stars under Bruno Barbieri at Locanda Solarola, one at Il Principe under Franco Aliberti.

Back in California I joined the opening team at Napa Rose at Disney's Grand Californian, ran the kitchen at Ambrosia in Santa Ana, then spent eleven years as founding Executive Chef of THE RANCH Restaurant & Saloon in Anaheim - a fifty-cook brigade across three venues, built around a two-acre heirloom farm where we grew our own produce. I cooked at the James Beard House in New York and at the James Beard Awards in Chicago.

After THE RANCH I opened ZÉYTOON in Laguna Beach as chef and owner. Since 2023 I have been Executive Chef of The Beach Club in Santa Monica, leading a forty-five-person culinary team. In April 2025 and again in 2026, during The Masters, I served as Executive Chef of the Taqueria at Map & Flag at Augusta National, overseeing a team producing more than 2,500 hand-pressed heirloom corn tortillas a day. I am also a Certified Sommelier through the Court of Master Sommeliers.

Why I write a dinner plan

A restaurant never wonders what is for dinner, because it runs on a plan. Someone writes it, and the whole week runs on it. Not because restaurant cooking is easier - it is harder - but because the deciding already happened.

That is the whole idea behind SEASON. Every Sunday I write a complete weekly dinner plan: ten dinners, five Classic and five Plant-Based, built around what is actually good at the market that week, with one shopping list that covers all of it. These are dishes I have cooked a thousand times, written the way I would hand them to a cook - what matters, what to do first, and how you know it is right.

"I am not trying to make you a chef. I am giving you the confidence to think like one."

What I write

The weekly dinner plans - ten dinners a week, every week, with the reasoning behind each one.
The recipes - full, tested, written the way I would hand them to a cook.
What is in season - what is worth cooking right now and why.
The 5:30 moment - why any of this exists in the first place.
SEASON Weekly - a free letter every Monday about what is at the market and what did not fit inside a recipe.
chefmichaelrossi.com - the professional side: the kitchens, the résumé, press and media.

Press and appearances

On SEASON

Chef Michael Rossi Joins The Fork Reporter - The Fork Report with Neil Saavedra, KFI AM 640, June 2026. Twenty-seven minutes on the 5:30 problem and how SEASON works.
SEASON Makes Dinner Planning Easy - Greer's OC, June 2026.