LOBSTER SANDWICH

"Food and Wine Magazine August 2024, Author and Assistant Food Editor for Food and Wine Magazine, Andee Gosnell"

Jeremiah Tower revisits a classic dish from the menu of Stars, his legendary California restaurant.

IT’S NOT EVERY DAY you get to meet a chef like Jeremiah Tower. So, I remember October 2, 2021, like it was yesterday. My former culinary school classmate and her husband had hired Tower to prepare some of his classic recipes for their food startup and invited me to take photographs. The soft light that morning in Emeryville, California, reinforced my first impressions of Tower—gentle, warm, and present. Throughout the weekend, as he topped blini with caviar and infused crème anglaise with rose petals, we chatted and shared laughs, and I was moved to find that as much as I was interested in his story, he was interested in mine. After we wrapped, we returned to San Francisco for a Champagne toast. Clinking glasses, I knew I had not only met a mentor—I had made a friend for life.

These days, Tower lives in Mérida, Mexico, with his husband, Curtis, where he writes a lively newsletter called O…