Dave Beran was born in Wisconsin and began his culinary career in Chicago at MK and then Tru. In 2006, he started at Alinea under chef Grant Achatz, earning promotion to Chef de Cuisine in 2008. He was then appointed Executive Chef at sister restaurant Next when it opened in 2011. Under his leadership, Next won a James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant in 2012. Over the following years, Beran researched and created 15 tasting menus, exploring different kinds of cuisine from around the world, from French and Italian to Thai, Japanese, and Vegan. All but one of these menus received the Chicago Tribune’s top four-star rating. In 2014, Beran won the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: Great Lakes, along with a Best New Chef Award from Food & Wine.
In 2016, Beran moved to LA, where he spent a year researching his own restaurant concept. When Dialogue opened, it was named one of the Best New Restaurants in America by GQ. It also received a Michelin star and five stars from Forbes Travel Guide, before becoming a victim of the pandemic in 2020.
In 2019, he opened a second restaurant, a high-end French Bistro in Santa Monica called Pasjoli, which in turn earned a Michelin star in 2021.
Restaurant
The name Pasjoli is a play on the French words ‘pas jolie,’ literally meaning ‘not pretty’ but also referring to the fact that this is a substitute for the restaurant chef-owner Dave Beran originally intended to open, which would have been called ‘Jolie.’ As the name suggests, the cuisine here is unapologetically French, albeit somewhat adapted in line with Southern Californian ingredients and Beran’s personal preferences.
Pasjoli has earned a long series of accolades. Besides the Michelin star it was first awarded soon after opening, it received five stars from the Forbes Travel Guide, was one of Food & Wine’s Top Openings, and made it to The Infatuation’s Best New Restaurants in the World list, all in 2019. The following year, Pasjoli was a James Beard Award nominee for Best New Restaurant while also featuring in the Best New Restaurants in America lists produced by the Robb Report, GQ, and Esquire.
Beran is set to open a new fine-dining restaurant near Pasjoli in Santa Monica in the second half of 2024. Inspired by the concept of the ‘secret garden,’ the new venture is situated in an indoor/outdoor space redeveloped by architect Steve Rugo, who also designed Alinea, Next, Dialogue, and Pasjoli.
Recipes and dishes
The menus at Pasjoli showcase the grand traditions of French—specifically Parisian—bistro cuisine, while adopting a modern approach and taking advantage of Southern California’s finest produce. Chef Beran believes in constructing dishes, and indeed entire tasting menus, that are complex in conception and composition while managing to remain simple in terms of aesthetics and presentation.
Beran’s signature dish at Pasjoli is, without a doubt, the pressed duck. Serving two people, the dish must be ordered in advance, and Beran prepares it himself at the table in a lavish floor show. He starts by lightly roasting the whole duck over a burner, while recounting the influence of Escoffier, the godfather of traditional French cuisine, to his diners. He then carves the breast meat and places it on a platter, which is taken to the kitchen by a staff member. The various remaining parts of the duck are then fitted into a silver press to extract all the juices. These are then warmed with red Bordeaux and Cognac to form a jus for the slices of breast when they return from the kitchen, beautifully sliced and plated.
