When I meet thirtysomething chef Charlie Ayers, he’s happily nibbling on a pig’s ear in a top Toronto wine bar. The ear has long since lost the pig and breaded and fried so that it could easily be mistaken for a schnitzel or even a fish finger, so it’s only after he offers me some by name that I recognise its triangular shape.* As exotic as the dish sounds, it’s also simple and meshes well with Ayers’ cooking mantra, readily displayed in his new book Food 2.0: follow the path of least resistance.

It’s a mantra that suits the chef whose first big gig was working for “Chez Ray” cooking for The Grateful Dead at their San Francisco Bay Area shows. When he talks about those days, I can see by his expression he had a good time – he started cooking for them in exchange for admission to the concerts. But he’s clear they weren’t big buddies and he certainly wasn’t partying with them: “We didn’t hang out, and I wasn’t in their personal space”. When pressed he’ll reveal that Bob Weir and Mickey Hart were the gourmets of the group and insisted on fresh, local, organic fare. The late Jerry Garcia was not as health conscience. His consistent order: hot dogs with dill pickle relish. Failure to procure said dogs was a firing offence.

As the early 90s moved into the mid and late Ayers began to cook in more and more and found himself south of San Francisco, in Palo Alto which reminded him of his New Jersey college town roots. He began to cater and cook privately for the new breed of Silicone Valley movers and shakers: the venture capitalists who were fuelling the fires of the dot.com boom and making a lot of money doing it. Ayers was busy with a roster of high roller clients when he chanced on an opportunity that seemed too good to be true. A wealthy family wanted a private chef who would accompany them as they traveled the world. When he signed up, it wasn’t long before Ayers discovered it was too good to be true. He was constantly surveilled by a closed circuit camera, berated, insulted and by 1999 he was back in Palo Alto and not sure what to do next. That’s when Larry Page and Sergey Brin somehow got a hold of him and hired him as the fifty-third employee of a small company that they claimed would “change the world through search.”

Ayers’ mandate at Google was to keep its 52 other employees happily fed and energised for their long work days. To be successful he had to “beat the street” and keep his diners from straying to neighbouring fast food outlets. And he had the restriction of never repeating a dish. This sounds tough enough in any office, but Google in those days was largely a collection of young engineers just out of college and, for many, away from home for the first time. Convincing them to choose healthy foods that metabolise easily wasn’t going to be easy. Page and Brin devised a scheme where Ayers would receive a bonus if productivity increased. It sounds tough, but Ayers chose to have fun. He wouldn’t release the day’s menu until five minutes before lunch. “It was important to try and get everyone down from their desks to have a meal together,” he explained. But, as the company grew and pace of work increased that wasn’t always possible, so Ayers created “commando kitchens” around the Google campus and designed menus of foods and snacks, like burritos, that could be held by one hand while the other stayed on a keyboard. As he honed his skill, he received a high compliment from his techie diners: “your food is so good, it’s like pornography!” By the time he left in 2006, Google was serving 1,500 hundred meals a day, and no self-respecting start-up of more than a few dozen employees would skip a catering plan. And cooks who started their profesional careers at Google were moving onto jobs at serious restaurants like WD50 in New York.

Ayers is still close to Larry Page and continues to consult for them – he’s preparing for a Q&A at their Mountainvew offices on his book shortly. He demonstrates great warmth when he talks about his time there. His book Food 2.0 seems almost written for young engineers. It’s simple food with a few energy boosters thrown in: the path of least resistance… Not that it’s all easy going and laid back. Ayers was one of the first members, along with Cat Cora, of Chefs for Humanity and flew down to Biloxi, Mississippi in days right after Hurricane Katrina. He’s kept up his involvement in that area and goes back to cook and work towards reconstruction often. And he was in Toronto as part of the California wine promotion group, demonstrating California cuisine. I thought that was perfect: his journey from the Dead to Google seems to mirror the development of Northern California culture in the past two decades. But what about the future? Ayers is busy opening up his first restaurant: Calafia. A high end VC haunt? “Not at all. The most expensive plate will be $18.” Ayers wants to bring fine dining sensibilities, especially good, fresh, local ingredients to the crowd that “don’t have access” to them normally. And the menu? Asian and Latino influenced because “They are the people who have actually built California. This is the real California cuisine.” Watch this man: he is marching into the future.

Learn more about Charlie Ayers at chefcharlieayers.com or Food 2.0: Secrets from the Chef who fed Google at Amazon.ca.

*The pig’s ear presentation was Chef’s Tobey Nemeth’s idea. It helps more apprehensive diners get over their reservations, since Jamie Kennedy Wine Bar’s
small plates are often shared.