Mark Strausman

Mark Strausman is a chef, restaurateur and author based in New York City. Over the course of his career he has owned some of New York’s most high profile and groundbreaking restaurants: Coco Pazzo, Campagna, Sapore di Mare in East Hampton. He is currently Managing Director of Freds at Barneys New York, which he developed for the Madison Avenue flagship store and which The New York Times acknowledges as one of New York’s power dining rooms (“A Hidden Nest Atop Barneys to Make Deals,” The New York Times, May 2, 2012). Mark develops and runs off shoots of Freds at Barneys New York in Los Angeles, Chicago and Scottsdale, with more locations on the horizon.

Mark began his career in a slightly unorthodox way for an American chef, by training from the ground up in traditional European kitchens. After receiving a degree in Hotel and Restaurant Management from New York Technical College in 1982, Mark spent four years living in Europe, working in top classical restaurant kitchens, gradually working his way up the brigade system from lowly Chef de commis (junior cook) to the coveted position of Chef de partie (senior chef), unheard of for an American at that time. He returned to New York City in 1986.

He burst onto the New York restaurant scene by pairing his classical training with a love of country cooking, partnering with Pino Luongo to open Sapore di Mare in East Hampton in 1988. Mark’s love of rustic cooking and the bounty of Long Island’s East End led him to naturally establish close relationships with the area’s local farmers and growers, years before the term “farm to table” became a buzzword.

A passion for sourcing the freshest, most local and best has driven his career ever since. In fact, the name of his next venture with Luongo, Coco Pazzo (“crazy chef” in Italian), was inspired by Mark’s obsession with using the freshest possible ingredients and the lengths to which he would go to source them. Coco Pazzo was awarded three stars by The New York Times. Mark continued this sensibility when he opened his own restaurant, the legendary Campagna, which was dubbed “media central” by New York magazine.
In 2010 Mark stretched the farm to table concept as far as it could go, opening his restaurant Agriturismo in the Hudson Valley, exclusively using foods from local farms and growers. Although small, Agriturismo’s unique focus earned it a feature in the Travel Section of The New York Times (November 18, 2011), which called Mark’s food “uncomplicated but satisfying,” and “loaded with flavor.” Mark is using his experience fostering relationships with an extensive network of small farmers, growers and artisans as a template for bringing local products to much larger scale businesses, which he already has at Freds in Manhattan, Chicago and Los Angeles.
An increasingly vocal advocate of the need to reform America’s industrial food system, Mark is using new media to lend his voice in support of sustainable farming and humane husbandry. His newly-developed YouTube channel, Farm Food Cooking, created with award-winning film director/editor Terry Katz, contains instructional cooking videos whose major focus is teaching people how to use products unique to small farms, such as pasture-raised beef. More content is in production, devoted to sharing nearly thirty years’ worth of knowledge professionally sourcing, purchasing and cooking.

Mark is the author of two cookbooks, both of which received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly. His first, The Campagna Table, was published by William Morrow in 1999. In addition to Publishers Weekly, it also received a starred review in Booklist. His second book, Two Meatballs in the Italian Kitchen, co-authored with Pino Luongo, is in its second printing. It received a James Beard Award nomination in 2008.

Mark has a wealth of television experience. He was a regular guest on the original Martha Stewart Living and has logged guest appearances on Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, CNN, The Today Show, The CBS Early Show, and numerous programs on The Food Network, as well as many shows in local markets.

Mark has worked online with Yahoo and is a guest contributor to The Huffington Post.