Patricia Unterman is founder and co-owner of the Hayes Street Grill.
She grew up in Evanston, Illinois and graduated from Stanford University. She attended the graduate school of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. After taking basic French cooking classes in the home kitchen of Josephine Araldo and practicing recipes from Julia Child, she opened a small restaurant in Berkeley in the early seventies called the Beggar’s Banquet. She starting writing as the Underground Gourmet for New West Magazine. In 1979 she opened the Hayes Street Grill in San Francisco with three partners–Dick Sander, Ann Powning and Robert Flaherty. That same year, she also became the restaurant critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, a job she held for the next fifteen. Later, after writing the San Francisco Food Lovers’ Guide, she joined the San Francisco Examiner as a restaurant critic and food columnist.
She is a founding board member of the Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market where she shops for the restaurant every Tuesday and Saturday.