Once a self-described “surfer kid from Southern California,” chef Tyler Burges began working in restaurants at age fifteen and, by nineteen, had made his way into one of San Diego’s most acclaimed fine-dining restaurants, Market Restaurant + Bar, under chef Carl Schroeder.
“I started with picking herbs, and all the people in the restaurant thought, ‘You know, he’ll last two weeks, and then he’s gonna be out.’” But Burges proved them wrong. It was the beginning of a career that soon led him to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, where Schroeder had also trained.
At age twenty-one, Burges traveled to Napa Valley for an internship at The Restaurant at Meadowood, where he met pastry chef Matt Tinder, a future colleague. He honed his skills at Coi in San Francisco and spent over five years at Michael Mina under chef Ron Siegel before moving to New York City, where he worked at Aldea and Caviar Russe.
His most formative experience, however, came during his years working for Joshua Skenes at Saison and Angler, where Burges learned how intricate processes could transform ingredients into something spectacular.
Burges helped open Angler Los Angeles and met restaurateur Ryu Amemiya during an Angler collaboration in Japan. The pair went on to open Smoke Door in Yokohama in 2022 and a second location in Lake Tahoe in 2023.
Burges’s culinary style is rooted in a passion for hyperlocal, seasonal ingredients and live-fire cooking, an approach that shapes all three restaurants he leads: Smoke Door Yokohama, Smoke Door Lake Tahoe, and Bengara in Los Angeles.
