California Dreaming

Celebrity chef Curtis Stone tells Elaine Lipworth about finding love with Hollywood star Lindsay Price, the joys and pitfalls of family life in LA and why he wouldn’t turn away Donald Trump from one of his restaurants.

- Elaine Lipworth

By any standards, Curtis Stone is living the Hollywood dream. “It’s beautiful every single day,” says the charismatic celebrity chef. “We’re 10 minutes from the beach – we live in a cosmopolitan city, but there are deer in our backyard and coyotes chasing them. You can be in the mountains at Mammoth skiing and back down at the beach surfing the same day.”

Curtis, his actress wife, Lindsay Price, and their two sons, Hudson, six, and three-year-old Emerson, live in Brentwood, an exclusive Los Angeles neighbourhood. At 42, Curtis is a best-selling cookbook author, a TV personality in Australia and in the United States, and the owner of two of LA’s leading, high-end restaurants, named after his grandmothers, Gwen and Maude.

“Maude [his paternal grandmother] taught me how to make Yorkshire fudge and how to play tennis,” Curtis says with a grin. “Gwen used to make great Scottish shortbread, and she taught me how to garden. She grew the most beautiful hydrangeas.”

The Australian Women’s Weekly meets Curtis and Lindsay at Gwen Butcher Shop & Restaurant, just before it opens for dinner. With its elegant art deco theme, lush garden patio, bar, walk-in fire pit and mellow Mumford & Sons soundtrack, the atmosphere is seductive. Gwen is a family affair in more ways than one. Curtis persuaded elder brother Luke, a former florist, to move to LA from Australia and run the venture with him. From the start, it won rave reviews.