Top honors for Chef Mark Sullivan Top honors for Chef Mark Sullivan (May 01, 2002)

It's been a very good year for Mark Sullivan, chef of Woodside's Village Pub, which has been garnering critical acclaim since it opened last June. He has been selected as one of America's best new chefs of 2002 by Food & Wine magazine, one of 11 honored.

Mr. Sullivan also traveled to New York in February to prepare a dinner for the James Beard Foundation, which named the Village Pub as one of the 10 top new restaurants in the United States.

Mr. Sullivan has cooked professionally since he was 16. He continued to work in restaurants through high school and while attending college at St. John's in Minnesota.

After holding jobs in Spain and France, he returned to San Francisco, where he worked at Slow Club, and 42 Degrees, voted the best Bay Area Mediterranean restaurant by Focus magazine.

He was chef de cuisine at Plumpjack Squaw Valley, before coming to the Village Pub to work with proprietor Tim Stannard.

The top chefs, including Mr. Sullivan, will be featured on the cover of Food & Wine's July issue and will be guests of honor at the 20th annual Food & Wine Magazine Classic in Aspen in June.

The only other Bay Area chef so honored is Laurent Gras of Fifth Floor in San Francisco.