Nancy Silverton still doesn’t like being called a chef. When I caught up with her on the phone — all while prepping for dinner at one of her Los Angeles restaurants — she says that she much prefers to be “called a cook, or a restaurant owner,” adding, “that whole image of a chef is still somebody much grander than who I feel like.”

It’s a modest perspective from a woman who helped put LA food on the map in the 1990s, cutting her chops at Michael’s in Santa Monica and then Wolfgang Puck’s Spago before creating La Brea Bakery, followed by the veritable village square dining experience of Campanile, with its vast gothic arches and Spanish tile fountain (now home to République), where Silverton herself would famously dish out grilled cheese sandwiches from behind the bar on Thursday nights.

Today, Silverton is a two-time James Beard Award winner, author of numerous cookbooks, co-owner of the ever-expanding Mozza Restaurant Group (a new Osteria Mozza opened last fall in Washington, D.C.), and, as of last week, the co-designer of a made-for-cooks clog line with Snibbs. Oh, and she’s launching two new Los Angeles restaurants this fall: Lapaba, an Italian Korean pasta bar, and Max and Helen’s, a classic diner.

“That sounds incredible,” I tell her. “It also sounds like a lot.”

She laughs. “I’m seeing a lot of my colleagues decide that they’re ready to slow down a bit,” she says, “which I can understand. But I’m just here thinking, Wow, I feel like I’m just getting started.”

It is easy to talk to Silverton about food, whether you know a lot about it or nothing at all — an observation that, I point out to her, might also speak to her success.

“Well, it’s true,” she says, again waxing humble, “that I have a fairly good track record. If I had to say, what is my strongest talent? It’s just being able to figure out what people want to eat.” She laughs, “Or at least enough people to keep my restaurants operating. I think I found that with my bread, the style of food at Campanile; the pizzeria, the osteria.”

The Campanile ecosystem set a precedent for her industry methodology for years to come. Silverton helped fine-tune the farm-to-table California dining fantasy that still coaxes industry folks and food lovers to Los Angeles and now inspires West Coast-style menus elsewhere in the world; As LA Weekly wrote in its “Elegy to Campanile” in 2012, penned right before the beloved restaurant shuttered after 23 years, Silverton’s style has been called “Cal-Italian,” “Med-Cal” and “urban rustic.” But a more accurate description might be that it is simply “what Silverton [likes] to eat,” and able to pull focus on what genuinely interests and populates her world — cheese, bread, salumi — and how it finds an approachable pedestal in her restaurants for diners. When you think of Silverton’s food, you think of fried zucchini blossoms and cheese sandwiches with burrata; parsley-heavy salads, and a passion for sourdough bread’s hole structure that’s so intense, she was once crowned “Her Holiness.”

On the surface, Lapaba and Max and Helen’s feel like a departure from the Mozza group multiverse; the former is an exploration of Italian and Korean fusion, and the latter diner will be — as her partner for the project, Phil Rosenthal, recently told Eater — “old-school […] elevating all the [diner] comfort foods that you know from childhood.” That instinct for understanding and celebrating comforting food is perhaps the through line of Silverton’s empire. Consider Lapaba’s menu, which, as Rebecca Roland reports for Eater, will feature kimchi suppli stuffed with Spam and mozzarella, and a little gem Caesar with doenjang — new Italian-Korean twists made in harmony with much-loved Silverton ingredients.

“For one, the scale of both of these places makes them [manageable],” Silverton says about the logistics of opening two places at once, adding, “these also aren’t 250-seat spots, which would require a lot more moving pieces.” Lapaba will open with partners Robert Kim (Norikaya, AB Steak, Mama Lion), and siblings Tanya and Joe Bastianich, who are also co-owners at Osteria Mozza, Chi Spacca, and Mozza2Go.

Silverton emphasizes the “it takes a village” perspective to opening and running her restaurants. Throughout our conversation, she is quick to unfurl a list of folks in her kitchens, such as Elizabeth Hong, who “[are] really in there doing the hard work […] and yet [everyone] always wants to give me the glory.”

It also feels fair to say that Silverton’s personal style — with her colorful prints, layered patterns, and plaited buns — has become iconic in the industry. Daniel Shemtob, the chef, restauranteur, and co-owner of Snibbs footwear, which makes durable kitchen shoes for folks working in the service industry, wanted to partner with Silverton on a shoe for the brand because of her down-to-earth vibe and distinct aesthetic vision. “I’ve always admired Mozza’s ingredient‑driven, never‑pretentious cooking,” he writes, “that integrity is exactly what I wanted. We spent two and a half years together because she insists on getting the whole experience right — she raises the bar.” And as for her style? “Chic maximalism,” Shemtob writes, “hair clips, colored glosses, fearless layers — playful but precise, totally her.”

“I have to feel that what I’m wearing is really an extension of me,” Silverton says, and the resulting eponymous clog, the Nancy, takes notes from her personal shoe collection, integrating vibrant soles and heel strap snaps with a farfalle-pasta-shaped non-slip tread. Given the rise of chefcore as a fashion aesthetic, with shows like The Bear and platforms such as TikTok turning line cooks into influencers, it positions Silverton, as always, right on the cultural pulse.

At a time when a lot of the culture feels to be about mastering trends, Silverton retains confidence in her own perspective. “There’s nothing wrong with trends,” she adds. “But wouldn’t you like to walk into a restaurant, and feel like it could have started at any time?”