Meet Our Chefs: Clarissa Flores

MEET OUR CHEFS

Clarissa Flores, Sous Chef

After jumpstarting a career change from specialty food buyer to chef by earning a culinary arts degree from City College of San Francisco, Clarissa was eager to absorb all facets of the culinary profession. Wasting no time, she externed in a number of San Francisco Bay Area fine dining restaurants to master cuisines as varied as Italian (at Oliveto in Oakland), Spanish tapas (César in Berkeley), and vegan and raw (Roxanne’s in Larkspur).

Clarissa’s culinary career has quite literally taken her around the globe. To acquire further knowledge of cooking techniques and cuisines, she travelled to Europe to stage. She traversed the continent over the course of a year, knocking on restaurants’ doors in search of brief apprenticeships. From London and Mykonos to Champagne and Amsterdam, her most memorable stage was cooking on a Dutch sailboat on the Wadden Sea. This was the first time she had ever sailed, and she recalls rising to the challenge of working in a galley “with only a 2’x2’ oven, a single gas burner, and a pantry the size of a closet.”

As Sous Chef for Arrillaga Family Dining Commons, Clarissa uses this wealth of experience to create unique dishes and share this knowledge with others. “I love to teach the students so they can understand how food transforms from raw ingredients to plated meal,” she says enthusiastically, noting her involvement with the Cardinal Cook-Off student cooking competition as a chef mentor.