[Image above] Example of a Jono Pandolfi stoneware dish used at a fine dining establishment. Credit: CBS Saturday Morning
For people looking to celebrate their holidays in style, nothing says “fine dining” like a Michelin-starred restaurant.
Michelin stars are a rating system used to recognize restaurants that offer outstanding cooking. The system was originally created in the 1920s by French tire manufacturing company Michelin to encourage more road trips (and thus tire sales). But it is now widely considered the most prestigious accolade in the culinary world, despite the ongoing bias toward restaurants that serve French food.
While Michelin claims that stars are awarded “for the food on the plate—nothing else,” studies show that food presentation can significantly impact a person’s perception of taste and overall enjoyment of a meal. As such, much discussion takes place behind the scenes at Michelin-starred restaurants to assure that the food is presented in the most attractive manner.
Comedy-drama television series The Bear recently brought these discussions into public focus. The show follows a young chef from the fine dining world who returns to Chicago to run his family’s sandwich shop. Culinary professionals have described the show as presenting quite an accurate portrayal of life in a restaurant kitchen, with some aspects pulled straight from real life—such as the stoneware dishes by Jono Pandolfi.
Pandolfi is a ceramic artist and designer who “fell in love” with pottery at Millbrook, a boarding school in upstate New York, and later studied studio art at Skidmore College (Saratoga Springs, N.Y.). He had a few collaborations with major clients during his early years, but his career took off after reconnecting with his high-school buddy, restaurateur Will Guidara.
Guidara is the former business partner of Daniel Humm at New York City’s NoMad Hotel and Michelin-starred Eleven Madison Park. He reached out to Pandolfi with a NoMad order for 6,000 pieces, and that deal helped spark introductions to other chefs and restaurateurs who were also drawn to Pandolfi’s distinctive and practical designs.
Today, Jono Pandolfi Designs has roughly 500 hospitality clients. Despite the company’s growth, Pandolfi and his artisans continue to form pieces by hand at their factory in Union City, New Jersey. Their work was recently featured on an episode of CBS Saturday Morning, which aired on Dec. 9, 2023 (see below).
Visiting a fine dining establishment is not the only way to experience Jono Pandolfi Designs. Dishes can be purchased for home use from the company’s website.
Update 12/20/2023 – Video removed and alternative article on the ongoing bias toward restaurants that serve French food added.