Ophir is a part-time professional chef, cooking for intimate private dinners at clients’ homes. Over the last twenty years, Ophir has worked in nine restaurants in London, Tel Aviv, and San Francisco, including stages at Atelier Crenn, Tartine Bakery, Tartine Manufactory, and Craftsman and Wolves.
While living in Tel Aviv, Israel, Ophir was hugely influenced and impressed by Israeli chefs who continuously pushed the boundaries of culinary creativity. When he moved to the Bay Area, CA, he was sad to see that although one can find excellent traditional Israeli food (hummus, falafel, tabouleh, etc.), it’s hard to find modernist-Israeli cuisine.
So he set out to create it, by offering private chef dinners at clients’ homes. Each tasting menu is assembled and customized to showcase the different flavors, cooking styles, and influences of modern-Israeli cuisine.
Outside his work as a chef, Ophir’s is an executive at General Motors, and previously led autonomous vehicle partnerships, business development, and commercialization for Aurora Innovation and Uber. He co-founded Social Finance Israel in Tel Aviv, a social impact investment fund that delivers financial and social impact returns to investors, served as Israel’s representative to the G8 Social Investment Task Force, and was a quantitative trader at Brevan Howard Asset Management in London. He holds a Ph.D, Msc, and Bsc in applied mathematics from Imperial College London, was a visiting scholar at MIT, and holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is a close-up magician in his spare time, having performed professionally for over 20 years.
“What is Israeli food?”
While there is no clear answer to this, modern-Israeli cooking combines the precision of modernist cuisine with the traditions, techniques, and spices of Jewish, Arab, Northern African, and Eastern European cuisine.
