Rick Edge, Chef

Rick Edge serves as Executive Chef for the Bardessono Hotel & Spa as well as Hotel Yountville, overseeing the changing seasonal menus and managing all aspects of both hotel's day-to-day operations.  Striking the delicate balance between sustainable innovation and timeless luxury, Bardessono Hotel & Spa blends a sleek aesthetic with a deep "green," eco-spirit instilled by the matriarch of the Bardessono family, Lucy Bardessono. Well-known in Napa Valley, Chef Rick Edge embraces a culinary philosophy ruled by the seasons. The Lucy menus are created with ingredients selected fresh daily from Bardessono's California Certified Organic Farming Garden and use only locally and regionally sourced ingredients from farms and purveyors. Germinating a variety of hybrid, organic vegetable seeds in the Lucy Garden, the culinary team takes abundant care of the product grown on the Bardessono grounds, including harvesting the organic fruit trees. Edge's mindful approach to seasonal cuisine is appreciated in the unique preparation of plates, focusing first and foremost on the vegetables while saving the protein for last steps of dish development. Edge's impressive culinary career began at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel's Silks restaurant in San Francisco.  Edge spent time in Boston and New York, continuing to learn about flavors, techniques and restaurant organization, before returning home to California accepting a position at the award-winning Pacific Edge restaurant at the Highlands Inn, Park Hyatt Carmel, and in 2004 joined the Pebble Beach Company as chef de cuisine for Club XIX, where he received numerous accolades from publications such as Zagat, Bon Appetite and Cigar Aficionado for his contemporary American cuisine and its French influence. Edge received his associate degree in Culinary Arts from the California Culinary Academy, and currently resides in Napa, CA.