Raul Dominguez

Four Seasons Tenure

• Since 2024
• First Four Seasons Position: Current

Employment History

• Greenleaf Produce Company, San Francisco; Hyatt Regency Sacramento; Grand Hyatt at SFO; Hops & Hominy, San Francisco; Cat Cora Lounge, San Francisco

Education

• Associate of Arts and Sciences, Culinary Arts/Chef Training, California Culinary Academy, San Francisco

Birthplace

• Lubbock, Texas, USA

Languages Spoken

• English, Spanish

"We're a boutique property with just one dining outlet, so our goal is for everything on the menu to be sustainable and stand out because of the quality," says Raul Dominguez of the culinary operation he oversees as Executive Chef of Four Seasons Hotel San Francisco at Embarcadero. "Standing out in dining in a city like San Francisco isn’t easy, so it all comes down to the basics: serve well-executed, nice dishes and let the quality of our ingredients speak for itself."

Raul’s role is as much about the leadership he brings to the kitchen as the culinary skills he possesses. "How do I plan for the season; what inspires my team to follow; how do I get the most and give back in return? Those things are on my mind every day." He enjoys complete freedom to be creative with the menu. "The nice thing is, I wasn’t rushed in here to change things," he recalls of his 2024 appointment. "The foundation was already here. I just fine-tuned the structure."

The culinary team that Raul leads numbers 15, who spend their days crafting dishes for Orafo, serving Italian-inspired San Francisco classics, and taking influences from the bountiful Bay Area ingredients and the farms we work with. With the Hotel’s diners being primarily business travellers in town for a day or two at most, Chef Raul endeavours to shape the kitchen operation as if it "served multiple outlets," while also minding in-room dining, small business meetings, other private dining occasions, and the employee cafeteria.

The bounty of the region is key to all the above. Raul brings years of experience working with local farms, including time spent in produce sales with Greenleaf - the leading distributor of fine produce, dairy, and more - that opened the door for him to get to know chefs and their cuisines across Northern California. Guided by the mantra "good product isn't cheap, and cheap product isn't good," he tries to "push boundaries" with ingredients while sharing common goals with purveyors. "The great thing about this region is we don’t have to manipulate produce like chefs do elsewhere, and that gives us a lot of confidence in the kitchen. The food we serve is well sourced and executed."

Born in northwest Texas, as a youngster Raul returned to his parents' home in La Union, El Salvador to live with his grandparents. His early youth was spent on his grandparents’ coffee plantation in Conchagua, El Salvador, with days in coffee fields and climbing fruit trees. His fascination for culinary took root early, inspired by his grandmothers' culinary brigade. Chef Raul learned to process farm animals and identify plants in the plantation's gardens.

He flipped his first egg at age four and later butchered his first pig at nine. In between, he returned to the United States at age seven, landing in San Francisco where his mother had relocated to study graphic design and started her business. After getting his start as a dishwasher in local restaurants, Raul joined the US Marine Corp at 17, which provided structure and discipline. Stationed at Camp Foster in Okinawa, Japan, he spent evenings after daily training working at a local restaurant, La Preciosa Latina, a Peruvian Japanese restaurant that offered a paid internship. “That was my introduction to professional kitchens, that was the moment I knew this was where I would spend my life, and I quickly developed a love for Japanese technique.”

After four years on the other side of the Pacific, Raul returned to San Francisco and continued to develop. He worked at bars and restaurants; opened an airport lounge for Iron Chef Cat Cora; reached chef de cuisine at southern-inspired Hops and Hominy; and along the way became an influential part of the San Francisco culinary scene.

Then he became part of the hotel scene, in the city and across the US, opening culinary operations at individual properties of an international luxury hotel group. After taking a year off for the birth of his son, he spent another year in sales before joining the second Four Seasons address in San Francisco, drawn by the Hotel brand’s reputation for authentic luxury.

An early riser, Raul is now in the kitchen by 6:00 am daily running operations throughout the day. Otherwise, he’s likely "out on the water," sharing his passion for fishing and surfing as well as camping and foraging with his wife and son. “We love the water; we get away to the mountains for trout season and enjoy surf fishing the California Coast,” he says.