Skip to Main Content

Spotlight: Plateia’s Chef Jason Tingley

Chef Jason

Executive Chef Jason Tingley never expected that his love of cooking would take him out of the kitchen and into the world of publishing – but it has with the recent release of “Plateia: The Cookbook,” a 240-page collection of more than 70 of the restaurant’s best-loved recipes, that Tingley co-authored with Chef Jeromy Sung, the restaurant’s chef de cuisine. 

Tingley’s relationship with food is rooted in family, beginning with his uncle, who expanded his palate and taught him to make a variety of dishes not normally attempted by a child, to his grandfather, a trained chef who never worked a day in a restaurant but whose home was one where relatives converged to share meals and memories. 

“My uncle used to come down from San Francisco and cook a lot of interesting stuff, like food from Vietnam and Thailand and all sorts of places,” said Tingley. “He was very well-cultured, so when I was 8 years old, I was making omelets, Hollandaise, avocado soup and pad Thai.” 

In addition, his grandfather, a World War II veteran and businessman who graduated from the original Cordon Bleu in France in the mid-40s, showed him that preparing and sharing food is one of the most wonderful ways to show people you care. “He was an incredible cook.”

As a teenager growing up in nearby Temple City, Tingley couldn’t think of anything else he’d rather do than go to cooking school, so his grandfather suggested that he enroll at L.A. Trade Technical College (LATTC) to see if he would actually like it. After excelling in the culinary arts, he decided to take cooking more seriously as a career path and ultimately become a chef.

“While I was attending LATTC, I was working at the Ritz Carlton In Pasadena. My father said ‘If this is what you want to do for a living, I want you to be educated at the highest level,’ so I ended up at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.”

Upon returning to Southern California, Tingley worked at L’Orangerie, Patina, The Belvedere Restaurant at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills and The Water Grill. He also served as executive chef for the Los Angeles Dodgers for seven years before joining Plateia in 2016.

“I like being a chef,” said Tingley, who along with his team at Plateia, was also involved in a recent UCLA fundraising effort to bring meals to homeless military veterans. “It has brought a lot of incredible things to my life.”

(Some of Tingley’s colleagues from across UCLA Dining have also been involved with providing meals to food insecure patients at the Venice Family Clinic since last fall.)

Tingley and his team are currently preparing take-out orders, serving al fresco meals outside in the restaurant’s olive tree courtyard and have  resumed low-capacity indoor dining. For team members who are looking for other places to eat on campus , Bruin Bowl and Bruin Café
will resume limited-capacity indoor dining starting March 31. Physical distancing protocols will be in place for guests from different households and guests will still be encouraged to dine outside. Meals at De Neve will continue to be offered as carry-out (not all-you-care-to-eat).