Partners
Considered one of the nation’s leading authorities on Asian food, Bruce Cost has devoted himself to this pursuit for over 35 years. For 6 years Mr. Cost conducted courses in Chinese and Southeast Asian cooking in San Francisco. Mr. Cost has demonstrated cooking nationally at De Gustibus (Macy’s, New York), at Food & Wine’s annual festival in Aspen, and at the Culinary Institute’s Greystone in Napa Valley.
He has lectured at the Smithsonian, the San Francisco Academy of Sciences and the UC Berkeley Extension on Asian food and its history, and has served on panels around the U.S and Canada including The International Conference on the Asian Diet (San Francisco, 11/95) sponsored by the Harvard School of Public Health, Cornell and the Oldways Foundation, and was a twice a panelist in New York at the Asia Society discussing Asian Influence on American Restaurants.
In 1997 Mr. Cost was a guest of the city of Hong Kong representing the U.S. in picking top chefs at the annual Hong Kong food festival with judges from 11 other countries.
For years, Cost wrote features for The San Francisco Chronicle, and a weekly column that ran as well in The Washington Post. Cost’s articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere via The Los Angeles Times Syndicate. Mr. Cost has written for popular food magazines and continues to contribute to Gourmet.
Mr. Cost has written three books: Bruce Cost’s Asian Ingredients (Morrow, re-published in 2001 by HarperCollins), Ginger East to West (Addison-Wesley) and Big Bowl Noodles and Rice (HarperCollins). With Asian Languages professor, Donald Harper, Cost has completed most of How to Steam a Bear, a translation of the world’s oldest collection of recipes from a 5th century Chinese manuscript. He was also part of the team that contributed to the updated The Joy of Cooking.
Called by Alice Waters in her introduction to Cost’s book on Asian ingredients, "one of the greatest cooks I have ever known," in 1989 Cost opened Monsoon in San Francisco. Nationally known, it was recognized as one of six 4-star restaurants in the Bay Area by the San Francisco Chronicle. For two years in a row Mr. Cost was a nominee for a James Beard award as "Best Chef in California" for his work at Monsoon.
In 1993, Cost transformed the historic Fourth Street Grill in Berkeley to Ginger Island, a highly regarded casual Asian restaurant. In 1994, Cost launched Ginger Club Inc. which, until the end of 1997, operated Ginger Club in Palo Alto.
Cost currently lives in Chicago where, in 1995, he partnered with Rich Melman’s Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, in creating the Big Bowl Restaurants, casual restaurants featuring Chinese and Thai food. In 2001, the Big Bowl restaurants were acquired by Brinker International (Chili’s, etc). Cost and his partners reacquired the group in 2004. Currently there are 7 Big Bowls in the Midwest and 1 in Washington D.C.
Cost and his partners also created Wow Bao (3 locations) in Chicago, a popular outlet offering several flavors of filled, steamed buns the Chinese call bao…there are plans to expand to New York. And he is a partner in a venture with Byerly’s markets in Minnesota to sell fresh Asian food to go in their 20 stores. Cost has just begun to sell his products in supermarkets. A Chinese group in Brooklyn, TMI Trading, manufactures these to his specifications.
Cost has 3 children from 2 marriages: Eliza, who is an Executive Producer of TV’s Hollywood Insider in Los Angeles and whose husband, Eric, won a Gold Medal for the U.S. at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney; Jennifer, an English professor at Mesa College in San Diego; and Ben who is a freshman at Lawrence University in Wisconsin.
Cost is an inveterate traveler who is well into his second million miles with United Airlines. With his son, Ben, he has spent time in most of the world’s rainforests from Borneo to the Amazon, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Australia, etc. His passion includes the world’s food markets where he does research and enjoys tracking down and sampling new foods and ingredients.
From 1966 to 1974 Cost lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, has a lifelong love affair with this city, and is anxious to return. Among his best friends are professionals in the New York food community.