Cindy Pawlcyn

Cynthia Pawlcyn (born Minneapolis, Minnesota) is an American chef and cookbook author known for the restaurants she opened in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Napa Valley between 1983 and 2008.

She took courses at Le Cordon Bleu and received formal training at La Varenne in Paris before working at The Pump Room in Chicago.

Pawlcyn left MacArthur Park to be the opening chef at Meadowood in St. Helena, California and then joined Bruce LeFavour at Rose et LaFavour.

[4] Pawlcyn collects cookbooks, but her home and her personal library of about 3,800 books were destroyed in the 2020 Glass Fire in Napa County.

When Pawlcyn opened the Fog City Diner in 1985, it became an iconic restaurant because it served critically acclaimed food in a building that looked like an Airstream trailer.

Go Fish/Brassica/Cindy Pawlcyn's Wood Grill & Wine Bar, St. Helena opened in 2006: in 2011, the restaurant committed to sustainability, took sushi off the menu.

Shortly after that, Cindy and partner Sean Knight announced they would be transitioning Go Fish to a Mediterranean restaurant called Brassica, opening in September 2011.