How Aaron Elliott Helps Private Citizens Cook Like Private Chefs

There’s a Michelin air to Aaron Elliot’s Los Angeles home kitchen. No clatter, no chaos—just quiet focus and a playlist that bounces between post-hardcore and Brazilian jazz. Elliott is a calm and measured guy with tattoos up to his ears. He wouldn’t hurt a fly, but you get the sense he may have hit something besides a baseball with a bat once or twice.

Today, the house smells like miso, golden garlic, and something sweet that turns out to be a wedge of lasagna with cultured cashew mozzarella and a single basil leaf on top that tastes like a Hi-Chew. Elliott’s cooking feels like an even cleaner coastal-California version of Nancy Silverton’s approach—obsessively honing dishes people love, but knowing when to stop before whatever you do won’t be better than what the farmer did. That's how you create food that people keep coming back for all year long, instead of just that one time on Valentine’s Day.

After bouncing around some L.A. kitchens, Elliott landed his first private chef gig with C.J. Wilson, sending the since-retired Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim pitcher out for road games with quinoa-oatmeal bowls. Then came Endeavor CEO and superagent Ari Emanuel, who brought Aaron into his house for what turned into a ten-year run—six days a week, including through the early days of the pandemic. “It’s easy to put a plate of vegetables in front of someone,” Emanuel says. “It’s much harder to make them taste good. Aaron has mastered this.”

James Cameron all but hired him on the spot after Elliott refused to cook meat for his kitchen audition. “Aaron made beautiful food for the whole family,” Suzy Cameron says. “I still make many of his recipes now that we’re in New Zealand.”

Eventually, he connected with Travis Barker through Elliott's younger brother Jake, who runs the front of the house at the West Hollywood vegan-hot-spot-to-the-stars Crossroads Kitchen, whose investors include Barker. Elliott still cooks Sunday suppers for the Barker-Kardashian orbit, which is as casual and intense as it sounds.

Jason Norton

And if your daughter is not actively beefing with Bhad Bhabie or you’re not a guy who’s had a cameo on Entourage, there’s Meal Ticket, Aaron’s weekly delivery drop. The makings of six plant-based dishes are delivered chilled, ready to be taken across the finish line with cute little cups of sauces and garnishes that make reheating and plating each dish feel truly fun and intuitive. The menus go out via email weekly, and regulars jump on fast. At $250, Meal Ticket ain’t cheap, but it gets you three to four days of food made with the same ingredients Elliott would serve to any of his A-list clients. We’re talking about a level of produce you’d see on Chef’s Table, but you get to eat it while stoned on the couch.

Elliott hits the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market twice weekly, first to wander and get ideas, then to stock up. He’ll swing by Erewhon for pantry items or any veg he couldn’t snag at the market (he’s one of Erewhon’s “top spenders,” and they recently thanked him with a gift card to the now-shuttered clothing boutique Fred Segal).

Elliott then cooks it all himself with help from a small crew. No ghost kitchens. No mystery staff. Just a guy who still likes to touch and taste every single thing before it’s lovingly packaged and labelled accordingly, with reheating instructions so easy even a novice home cook couldn’t screw them up. The cilantro stems have been hand-selected to Elliott’s exacting standards; all you have to do is lay them down on that perfect Japanese sweet potato.

Before the Calabasas parking passes and fermented cashew cheeses, Aaron was bussing tables in Pittsburgh at his family’s Italian spot. His childhood was a little loud, a little chaotic, and a lot like The Bear’s “Fishes” episode, minus the car crashing into the dining room. That chaos, he says, birthed a specific type of work ethic—an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work. He trained at Noma, arguably the best restaurant on earth, where he worked through each station until his visa ran out—just short of his turn to make “family meal,” which he jokes was probably a relief for the omnivores on staff that day.

He landed in L.A. at the lauded neighborhood spot Rustic Canyon, known as L.A.’s produce mecca and, in my opinion, the closest thing we’ve got to Chez Panisse (and the only reason I’ll drive to Santa Monica.)

You won’t find reindeer ceviche or pinecone chawanmushi on his menu, but you will find a perfect mix of dishes conceived by a chef who’s old enough to know the golden era of farm-to-table cooking but can plate it with modern techniques for the next generation. I loved Aaron’s signature fried artichoke sandwich, impossibly crunchy in mochi flour, or a perfect dairyless corn chowder cooked down with their cobs. You’ll find cultured cashew mozz that actually stretches and grated parm made from the good Marcona almonds. Every dish tastes like Sunday.

Ask him about his death row meal, and he won’t say, “Pad thai, extra tofu” or “celeriac shwarma.” He’ll say linguine with red clam sauce. A classic vongole, finished with tomato. A nod to where he started. After hanging out with Aaron for an afternoon, this was the first and last time he alluded to the possibility of “breaking edge.”

There might be a restaurant in the works. Something small, thoughtful, hopefully with his brother Jake on the floor and a lasagna melting under the salamander. Until then, he’s doing what he does best: feeding people who have every option in the world, but keep coming back to him.

Jason Norton