One Market Restaurant Opening Chef and Prolific Industry Vet Stephen Simmons Dies at 65

Stephen Simmons was a mainstay in the Northern California food scene.

Stephen Lloyd Simmons, a chef with over 40 years in the hospitality industry working in several storied restaurants in San Francisco and the larger Bay Area, died on Thursday, March 28 of a heart attack, his family confirmed. He was 65.

Born in Boston, Simmons’s formal career in food began after graduating from City College of San Francisco’s Hotel and Restaurant Management School, then completing an internship at San Francisco restaurant Stars, under famed chefs Jeremiah Tower and Mark Franz. He was the opening chef at One Market in San Francisco and the Lark Creek Inn, and went on to open his own restaurants, Bubba’s Diner and Lincoln Park in San Anselmo. His last position was as chef de cuisine at Noe Valley’s now-closed Birch & Rye, working there from opening until the restaurant closed at the end of its two-year tenure. Chef-owner Anya El-Wattar says Simmons was the kind of person who could calm anyone down. “He was a gentleman,” El-Wattar says. “He had incredible human integrity. He would say all the time ‘I’m in the business of taking care of people.’”

Simmons joined the restaurant as a consultant initially, but as El-Wattar worked with him she realized she needed his expertise, sure hand, and cool head. He lived on a ranch in Guerneville but spent his weekdays in San Francisco, often staying overnight at the restaurant to ensure operations went smoothly from start to finish. As the business went through ups and downs, he would remind the chef-owner that she’d get through this and everything would be okay. “He was grace under fire,” El-Wattar says.

Simmons’s mother Sylvia and sister Lisa confirm his deep love of his career, pointing to his decades as a consultant for restaurants all over the country. He began baking bread when he was just 12 years old, the eldest sibling of three, waiting at the oven until the bread came out. His great-aunts and grandmother influenced Stephen from an early age in cooking, though Sylvia and Lisa confirmed Sylvia made a mean chili. At 19 years old, Simmons moved to California from the East Coast, which left a major impression on Lisa and her sister Alison, showing them what was possible outside of Massachusetts. “He was a wonderful son,” Sylvia says. “We loved his food. He was passionate about food, and he was lucky his avocation and vocation came together.”

From left, Michael Dellar, Stephen Simmons, and Bradley Ogden.

The team at One Market Restaurant, a business he co-opened after opening the Lark Creek Inn in 1989 with founders Michael Dellar and Bradley Ogden, wrote a statement to Eater SF regarding Simmons’s death. “We will miss his culinary prowess, calm demeanor, dry sense of humor, wonderful laugh and long-standing friendship,” a statement from Dellar reads in part. “May his memory be a blessing.” Lorenzo Bouchard, general manager and partner at One Market writes that Simmons was “much more” than their opening chef. “He was a devoted father and beloved contemporary, whose sly wit and smile were the perfect complement to his warmth and easy charm,” Bouchard wrote in a statement. “We all loved him from the get-go, and that lasted well over three decades. We will always remember him with deep affection.”

Simmons’s truly impressive career included stints as Director of Food Operations and as private chef at George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch in Marin County, executive chef at Peacock Gap Golf Club, executive sous chef at Campton Place, and far more, thanks to consulting at the Full Plate Restaurant Consulting Group. Still, his friends and family say he was a lover of hiking, fishing, and nature, sending photos of the sunlight and rivers to his friends and family. “It’s this gut punch that he’s gone,” Lisa says. “He had this calm demeanor, this ‘It’s all going to be okay’ way about him. He had made San Francisco his home, and we found solace there.”

According to his family’s obituary, memorial services in Guerneville will take place in early June and in Boston, Massachusetts, in August. Simmons is survived by his three children, Alexander, Liliana, and Kaleb. Sylvia and Lisa asked for fans to donate to the Food For Thought Food Bank. A GoFundMe has also been established to help keep Simmons’s son Kaleb in school.