Central Valley-born celebrity chef Michael Chiarello dies in Napa hospital at 61

Celebrity chef Michael Chiarello, born and reared in Turlock, has died at 61.

Chiarello, who ran renowned restaurants in San Francisco and Napa Valley, died Friday night, his family told the San Francisco Chronicle.

He was in a Napa medical center, where he’d been treated for the past week for an acute allergic reaction that led to anaphylactic shock, according to his company, Gruppo Chiarello, it was reported by Business Wire. “He spent his final moments surrounded by family and friends ...”

The chef’s biography on michaelchiarello.com says, “Born in 1962 in the central California community of Turlock, Michael enjoyed a classic Italian upbringing. His parents, following old-school tradition, maintained a garden and harvested ingredients for their homemade regional-Calabrian meals. ... Michael was surrounded by the daily celebration of their Calabrian heritage: good food, wine, and family. By the age of 14, he had taken on his first restaurant apprenticeship.”

In a February 2000 article that followed a Bee reporter’s interview with Chiarello at his St. Helena restaurant, Tra Vigne, and his home in the small city, he reflected on his days in Stanislaus County. “When my mom died, I was going through her stuff and found a third-grade report that I did that said, “I want to be a chef and own my own restaurant.’“

As a teenager, he worked in pizza places and local restaurants like Mango’s and the Del Puerto Hotel, that Bee article said. After graduating from Turlock High in 1979, he headed to the Culinary Institute of America in New York, then studied hotel and restaurant management at Florida International University in Miami.

He worked in a number of “fancy restaurants,” but an eclectic menu at one establishment convinced him to concentrate on the food of his childhood.

“It didn’t feel right preparing food from all over the globe,” Chiarello told The Bee. “I found I couldn’t be an expert in five cuisines. I could be a scholar of them, but not an expert. It was not my cup of tea.”

So he returned to the hearty Italian cooking of his family, most especially his mother.

Chiarello learned to cook at his mother’s side, he said in the 2000 article. “My mother wasn’t afraid to do anything. She did all the Old World things,” he said. She cooked and canned, gardened and even cured her own prosciutto. “I went to (culinary) school with a big bag of tricks.”

And he returned to California, settling in the Napa Valley as its tastes were evolving. “In the Napa Valley, you can cook like you live in the city,” while enjoying life in the country, he told The Bee.

Chiarello’s restaurants included Bottega and Ottimo, both in Napa Valley, and Coqueta, a Spanish spot with locations in Napa Valley and at San Francisco’s Pier 5, his obituary in the Chronicle said.

In November 2016, Chiarello made headlines when he was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence and possessing drugs while driving his Porsche in Napa County.

Earlier that year, the Emmy Award-winning host of the Food Network show “Easy Entertaining with Michael Chiarello” also had been accused in lawsuits of sexually harassing his female employees. He denied the allegations and settled out of court.