Thierry Rautureau, Chef In The Hat, Will Host Cooking Demo at IFBC

Get ready to laugh and learn! Award-winning chef, Chef In the Hat, Thierry Rautureau, will host an informative cooking demonstration at this year's International Food Blogger Conference. Rautureau has a knack for taking simple ingredients from leftovers in your fridge to seasonal produce and turning them into culinary marvels. Even the seasoned cook will find themselves saying ah ha.

Rautureau, known as the Chef In The Hat, is the chef/owner of Rover's Restaurant (1987-2013), Luc, and Loulay Kitchen & Bar in Seattle, Washington.  For 26 years, Rover's offered cuisine that Rautureau describes as Northwest Contemporary with a French accent.  Rautureau was born in the town of Saint Hilaire de Loulay in the Muscadet region of France.  At fourteen, he started a cooking apprenticeship in Anjou, France.  At twenty, he moved to the United States and worked at various fine restaurants including La Fontaine in Chicago, the Regency Club for Joachim Splichal in Los Angeles, and the Seventh Street Bistro with Laurent Quenioux, also in Los Angeles. While visiting Seattle in 1987, Rautureau dined at Rover’s and discovered that the restaurant was up for sale.  Tired of Los Angeles, he decided to buy the restaurant so that he could express his culinary creativity as the chef/owner. Rautureau received the name Chef In The Hat, due to his ever-present fedora. Chef Thierry Rautureau has won various awards including the James Beard Award for Best Chef in the Pacific Northwest in 1998, and has been awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre Du Merite Agricole by the French government.  Rautureau’s cuisine can best be described as whimsical.

Chef In The Hat is well-known for his radio show “Seattle Kitchen” with Chef Tom Douglas and Katie O on Kiro 97.3FM and his television appearance as a contestant on Bravo’s Top Chef Master’s in 2010 and again in 2012.