Michael Cimarusti and the Providence tree

Michael Cimarusti grew up in Rhode Island, and the East Coast — specifically New England seafood — never left his cooking. He trained at the California Culinary Academy, then went to New York, where two kitchens shaped him: Larry Forgione’s An American Place, an early temple of “American” fine dining and seasonal sourcing, and Le Cirque, where he spent roughly four years under Sottha Khunn doing classical French sauce work ^[3]. Back in Los Angeles he ran the kitchen at Water Grill, the downtown seafood institution, before opening — with front-of-house partner Donato Poto — Providence on Melrose in 2005 ^[1][3][4].

Providence is the trunk, and it is one of the most decorated restaurants in Los Angeles: a Michelin star from 2008, a second from 2009, held continuously after the guide returned to California, and elevated to three Michelin stars in the 2025 California guide — LA’s first-ever 3-star restaurant (alongside Somni) — plus a Green Michelin Star for sustainability ^[1]. It is a seafood-fine-dining flagship in the strict sense — a tasting-menu room where the product is the argument, and the argument is largely about where the fish came from. Cimarusti’s sustainability commitment is not decoration: he is closely tied to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program and has been a public advocate for responsible sourcing, which is the moral spine of the whole tree ^[4].

Direct ventures

• Providence (Melrose/Hollywood, 2005–present) — the flagship; three-Michelin-star seafood tasting menu (LA’s first 3-star, 2025 guide), Green Star, run with partner Donato Poto. The kitchen that everything else radiates from ^[1][3].
• Connie & Ted’s (West Hollywood, 2013–present) — the heritage project: a New England-style seafood shack — clam chowder, lobster rolls, fried clams, a raw bar — named for Cimarusti’s grandparents and built straight out of his Rhode Island childhood. It is the casual, family-roots counterweight to Providence’s formality ^[2].
• Cape Seafood and Provisions (Hollywood) — a sustainable-seafood retail market / fishmonger, the supply-chain extension of the mission: the same sourcing standards Providence runs on, sold over a counter ^[4].

Partial information: any further or out-of-LA ventures are not confirmed in this pass, and the precise ownership/partnership structure across Providence, Connie & Ted’s, and Cape Seafood (Cimarusti–Poto and others) is documented in pieces rather than in one place.

Alumni / mentees

Providence is one of the most consequential fine-dining training grounds in Los Angeles — its standard for product handling and its rigorous, classically grounded line make a Providence sous-chef posting a serious credential, and a generation of LA fine-dining cooks has passed through it on the way to running their own kitchens. But — and this is a known gap in the public record — the specific named protégés who have opened their own restaurants are under-documented in English-language press relative to comparable trees; tracing the Providence diaspora properly would take an Eater LA / industry-archive pass. What is clear is the signature the kitchen imparts: obsessive sourcing, restraint, classical sauce technique inherited from the Le Cirque / Forgione lineage.

What the tree means

The Providence tree is defined by a mission — sustainable seafood — held longer and more publicly than almost any other LA chef has held a single cause ^[1][4]. It is also a clean example of the “heritage shack alongside the temple” pattern: Connie & Ted’s is to Providence what Connie & Ted’s home cooking was to a Rhode Island kid — the same chef, the same respect for the product, two completely different price points and rooms ^[2]. And it is one of LA’s strongest counters to the idea that the city can’t do seafood fine dining: Cimarusti brought East Coast seafood culture west and turned it into one of the region’s most-decorated kitchens.