California Cuisine Guide: 5 Traits of California Cuisine

California cuisine is an eclectic yet simple style of cooking originating in its titular United States region. In addition to relying on locally sourced, in-season, and sustainable ingredients available in California, this culinary tradition stresses the importance of straightforward meal preparation and healthy, light dishes. Staples of California cuisine include fresh produce, seafood, and lean meats.

The cuisine embraces a variety of ethnic foods and cooking techniques endemic to the Golden State’s diverse population. Chefs specializing in this tradition may borrow from Asian, Mexican, European, and South American food cultures, creating American and ethnic fusion dishes like barbecue chicken pizza or Chinese chicken salad.

Here is a brief overview of this eclectic cuisine’s history:

• Beginnings: Historians can trace the roots of California cuisine back to the California Gold Rush of the mid-nineteenth century, when throngs of prospective gold miners flocked to the state from across the country and around the world. California transplants brought an abundance of new culinary styles, laying the groundwork for the state’s eclectic cooking conventions.
• Helen Brown’s influence: It wasn’t until the mid-twentieth century that chefs explicitly refined the fresh-focused, sustainable tenets of this culinary tradition. In 1952, Chef Helen Evans Brown published the pivotal Helen Brown’s West Coast Cookbook, a culinary blueprint for modern California cuisine. Brown encouraged using the freshest ingredients, produce, and seafood sourced from local farmers and fishmongers over chain grocery stores.
• Trailblazers: More chefs soon followed Brown’s footsteps by opening California cuisine restaurants throughout the Golden State. In 1971, Alice Waters founded the acclaimed Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, using her healthy dining experiences in France as inspiration for her menu. Other trailblazers in the California cuisine movement include Sally and Don Schmitt, who opened Napa Valley’s French Laundry in 1978 (now owned by Chef Thomas Keller). Five years later, Wolfgang Puck opened Santa Monica’s Chinois On Main, featuring a menu that boldly merges Chinese tradition with locally sourced California ingredients.

Here are some characteristics that make California cuisine stand out from other culinary styles.

1. 1. Chef-driven: California cuisine focuses less on specific dishes and more on the creative ways chefs interpret the fresh ingredients currently available to them from local farmers and butchers. With all-star chefs at the forefront of so many California cuisine establishments, it’s also common for restaurants to feature open kitchens allowing diners to observe the maestros in action.
2. 2. Fresh local ingredients: The core tenet of California cuisine involves using different fresh, in-season ingredients sourced from farmers’ markets or independent farms. Some signature foods of this culinary tradition include avocados, sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke, figs, goat cheese, roasted garlic, Dungeness crab, and sourdough bread.
3. 3. International influences: Despite its emphasis on Golden State–sourced ingredients, California cuisine draws heavy influence from countries all over the globe. Chefs preparing California cuisine may fuse elements of Mexican, Korean, Thai, Filipino, Chinese, Japanese, French, or Italian food with classic American dishes.
4. 4. Restrained preparation: More often than not, chefs specializing in California cuisine keep food preparation simple, allowing the fresh, high-quality ingredients to speak for themselves. To accomplish this, chefs will typically prepare their food subtly, with just a few seasonings to complement the ingredients’ natural flavors, rather than overwhelming the food with ingredients that drastically alter the gustatory profile.
5. 5. Seasonality: It’s common for chefs specializing in California cuisine to rotate their menus based on seasonally available ingredients to ensure that their dishes use the freshest-possible produce, meat, and seafood.

Here are some of the most popular dishes associated with California cuisine.

1. 1. California roll: Originating in Los Angeles in the late twentieth century, this popular cooked sushi roll represents a fusion of Japanese and Californian cuisine. The California roll is an uramaki roll (meaning there’s a layer of rice outside the nori seaweed) containing avocado, crab, and cucumber on the inside. While the California roll grew out of the Golden State, it’s now one of the most popular sushi rolls in the United States.
2. 2. California-style pizza: California-style pizza has a thin crust similar to its New York–style counterpart, with the major distinction coming from the choice of toppings. California-style pizza toppings include gourmet, non-traditional local ingredients like artichoke, arugula, goat cheese, avocado, flavored sauces, an assortment of roasted veggies, and an array of meats (barbecued chicken, smoked salmon, and duck sausage, to name a few). Experimental pizza chef Ed LaDou initially popularized California-style pizza in San Francisco in the 1970s.
3. 3. Cioppino: Brought to the Bay Area by Italian immigrants in the late nineteenth century, cioppino is a seafood stew famously associated with San Francisco. It traditionally features the “day’s catch”—a variety of ingredients, including white fish, shellfish like clams, mussels, scallops, and Dungeness crab, or calamari (squid)—in a tomato and wine–based broth seasoned with Italian spices. Cioppino is much thinner than gumbo, and similar to French bouillabaisse, without the spicy mayonnaise (rouille), saffron, thyme, and dried orange.
4. 4. Cobb salad: This chopped salad incorporates thinly shredded lettuces (including romaine, iceberg, endive, and watercress), crispy bacon, crumbled Roquefort cheese, shredded cheddar, hard-boiled eggs, avocado, chicken or turkey, and tomato, all arranged into colorful strips. Red wine vinaigrette is the typical dressing for the salad, which gets finished with a sprinkle of chives. You can trace the Cobb salad’s origins back to Los Angeles’ Brown Derby restaurant in the 1930s.
5. 5. Sourdough bread: Sourdough is a blanket term for breads made with a living culture of natural, wild yeast, rather than commercial yeast. Though this type of bread has been popular for centuries, its popularity exploded in San Francisco during the California Gold Rush. In California cuisine, chefs often use sourdough bread for sandwiches and avocado toast.
6. 6. Tacos and burritos: Due to California’s proximity to the Mexican border, you’ll typically find a taco or burrito menu option at many of the state’s culinary hotspots. Baja-style fish tacos—handmade corn or flour tortillas filled with crispy fried white fish, slaw, creamy sauce, and a spritz of lime or lemon juice—exemplify Mexican-Californian culinary fusion.

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