When: Friday night for a catch up with your soulmate

Where: Workshop Kitchen and Bar in Hollywood

Who: Chef Michael Beckman, co-owner and chef

Smells Like: honey and stillness

Atmosphere: intimate and transformative with their cocoon like tables

Good for: a life altering experience with someone you hold dear, especially when they’re the only person in the world that you want to get lost in their eyes

Get Drunk on: the martini with a side car

During Your Time Here, You Might Feel: very calm and inspired

Feel better with: fried mushrooms that taste like calamari

We converged with Workshop’s amazing co-owner and Chef, Michael Beckman to ask him Who, What, When, Where, and Why.

Mui-hai and Bree: Who taught you how to cook?

Chef: I learned to cook working in Italian restaurants in North Beach in San Francisco as a student at USF.  I later studied at the Paul Bocuse Institute in Lyon, France, and apprenticed at the 3* Michelin “Lameloise” in Burgundy.  

Mui-hai and Bree: What was the first thing you learned how to cook, and do you still cook that now?

Chef: Simple stuff at home like quesadillas.  I’m a sucker for a late night quesadilla for sure.

Mui-hai and Bree: What's your favorite family dish when you were growing up?

Chef: Mom’s 70’s influenced tacos with tortillas flash fried crunchy but soft. That or grandma’s minced meat pies.

Mui-hai and Bree: What is your biggest satisfaction as a chef?

Chef: Conceptualizing something that I connect with on an emotional level and seeing it come to fruition in the restaurant.

Mui-hai and Bree: What were the inspirations when you were creating the menu for Workshop?

Chef: The menu weaves decades of travel and culinary memories with the products and techniques that I’m most excited about right now in Los Angeles.  I love grilling over live fire and that has always had an impact on our style of cooking at Workshop.

Mui-hai and Bree: What makes Workshop special?

A style of seasonal cooking that has finesse but is approachable and satisfying and beautifully presented in a space that is bold and dramatic and striking and truly one of a kind.

Photographed, Written, and Eaten by Mui-Hai Chu and Bree Castillo