James Beard Outstanding Restaurateur semifinalist Mark Stark is the executive chef and co-owner with his wife Terri of seven wildly successful restaurants in Sonoma County California, each with a different dining concept under the umbrella of the Stark Reality Restaurants management group: Willi’s Wine Bar, Bird & The Bottle, Stark’s Steak & Seafood, Grossman’s Noshery, and Monti’s in Santa Rosa, and Willi’s Seafood and Bravas Bar de Tapas in Healdsburg. The Starks will open their eighth restaurant, Augie’s French, in Downtown Santa Rosa in summer 2023.

Mark is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York and honed his professional cooking skills in Washington DC and Seattle before settling in Sonoma County. His inventive menus highlight a global melding of flavors with Asian, Mediterranean, French, Spanish and Californian influences. 

Raised on Solomons Island along the Chesapeake Bay, Mark is thrilled to return to his East Coast roots for the Nantucket Wine & Food Festival.