Born in England, chef Rupert Blease attended culinary school in Toulouse, France. After graduating, he worked in Michelin-starred kitchens in France and England, including L’Amphitryon in Toulouse and chef Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons in Oxfordshire. At Le Manoir, Blease met Carrie, his future wife and business partner.
Blease moved to New York in 2005 and worked as a line cook at Per Se before returning to London to help open Texture, the now-closed, Icelandic-influenced restaurant. He later settled in San Francisco and served as a sous chef at Central Kitchen from 2011 to 2013, building relationships with Bay Area farmers and purveyors.
The Bleases opened Lord Stanley in 2015. The restaurant soon earned a Michelin star and a place on Bon Appétit’s 2016 Hot 10 list. Its nearly decade-long run included a transformation into Turntable at Lord Stanley, a rotating chef-residency series, before the restaurant closed permanently in May 2025.
“We had been planning Wolfsbane for about six months before Lord Stanley closed,” says Blease. “At first, maybe something more casual was in the cards, but the more we got into it, we knew that we were veering towards a more intimate space with as much focus on the food and service as possible.”
The Bleases opened Wolfsbane, an intimate tasting-menu restaurant in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood, in October 2025. Michelin awarded it one star in July 2026.
