Meave McAuliffe grew up around her mom’s bakery in Venice, Calif., which specialized in French pastries. It spurred early culinary aspirations for the young Ms. McAuliffe, the new chef at Saltwater Oyster Depot, where she is continuing to cook up seafood-centric coastal California cuisine. “On the way to school we would stop there before the sun rose, when the croissants were proofing, and the yeasty, buttery smell was like magic in the air…I always wanted to become a chef.” Ms. McAuliffe recently moved from Martha’s Vineyard, where she ran a small café and raw bar, to Bolinas; this month, she became the head chef at Saltwater, following chef Matt Elias’s departure. She didn’t attend culinary school, instead earning a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies from Hampshire College in Massachusetts. But she worked her way up at Gjelina, in L.A., where she went from hosting to charcuterie to pastry, eventually becoming the head pastry chef. Then she jumped to the savory side of cooking, landing a job as a chef de cuisine at a sister establishment, Gjelina Takeaway. “I really appreciate my background in pastry. It’s more mathematical…I draw on that in my cooking,” she said. She is also inspired by her travels, which have taken her to places like Japan, where she appreciated the clean, simple culinary heritage, as well as Oaxaca and India, where she spent time working with organic spice farmers. But she added that the when the quality of ingredients is high, keeping it simple is sometimes best. Being a female chef in a historically male-dominated industry hasn’t always been easy—she recalled in L.A. her boss reminding the kitchen to follow her orders—but the Bay Area food scene, which venerates stalwarts like Alice Waters, may be a little ahead of the times, she observed.
Saltwater’s new chef
