Personalities

Dmitry Elperin

Dmitry's Links:

The Village Pub

At his childhood home in Minsk, the capital of Belarus in Russia, Dmitry’s family always kept a garden. Dmitry’s grandfather, who did most of the cooking, would use the fresh vegetables to make the family’s meals. “The garden was really my first introduction to cooking,” Dmitry says. When his family moved to Madison, Wisconsin when Dmitry was nine years old, they continued the family tradition by planting a garden. Dmitry would often help his mother with the cooking, learning his way around the kitchen.

After working in restaurant kitchens in his teens and graduating from the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, Dmitry began his career by working at Red Sage in Washington D.C. for Mark Miller, the pioneering chef who brought Southwestern cuisine to prominence. After four years in D.C., Dmitry headed west to California, where he expanded his repertoire to include classical French cuisine at Sans Souci (Carmel) and Asian fusion at Hawthorne Lane (San Francisco). He returned to the East Coast specifically to work for Daniel Boulud, a chef he greatly admires, but decided to return to the West Coast. “I got spoiled in San Francisco, and I came back to the city I love,” he says.

Dmitry has worked in celebrated San Francisco restaurants with such talented chefs as Adrian Hoffman at One Market Restaurant, Daniel Humm at Campton Place, and Laurent Manrique at Aqua. A chance meeting with The Village Pub’s executive chef Mark Sullivan in New York City led to their teaming up in the spring of 2007 to run the beloved restaurant in Woodside, California. “I’m proud to be part of a program that uses local ingredients,” says Dmitry. Since his employment, The Village Pub has been award one Michelin star for three consecutive years.

The Village Pub’s partnership with a 5-acre organic farm in the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains means that Dmitry can carry on The Village Pub’s tradition of pristine, seasonal cuisine. Each day, Dmitry crafts the menu around a list of fresh-picked produce. “The farm comes to us. It’s challenging and it gives me a chance to be creative. It’s such a difference using an ingredient fresh from the ground. The taste is incomparable.”

Dmitry’s farm-to-table cuisine is regionally inspired and elegant, having won consistent praise on a local and national level, including a highly coveted Michelin star in 2009, 2010 and 2011.

In his free time, Dmitry enjoys exploring other restaurants and traveling. He lives in San Francisco.