Hollingsworth was the chef de cuisine at The French Laundry in Yountville, Calif., working under Thomas Keller and enjoying the clout that comes with running the kitchen at the renowned (and three Michelin-starred) eatery. But he was also beginning to envision his plans for a post-Keller career. “I really wanted to figure out what to do with my personal life,” he says. “I was working for an amazing chef in an amazing environment, but ultimately it wasn’t what I wanted to do forever.” Then a group of women came in to give their compliments to the chef, and Hollingsworth had his answer.

As Caroline—she goes by Coco—Hollingsworth tells it, she was visiting Napa Valley (from southern California) for the requisite wine-tasting tours when a friend suggested they dine at The French Laundry. She didn’t usually frequent Michelin-starred restaurants, but someone knew someone who knew someone and she has never been one to turn down a golden gastronomic opportunity. When she posed alongside the young Hollingsworth, he caught her eye. The feeling was mutual, and they exchanged numbers. Phone calls turned to dating turned to a move to Los Angeles, and now that original photo hangs on the kitchen wall of their Los Angeles home, watching over the married couple and their four young children. Serendipitous as this meet-cute was, Hollingsworth has had his life’s purpose laid out before him for a long time.

Hollingsworth has become a mainstay in the LA culinary scene. But the earliest seeds of epicurean interest were planted during his early childhood in Texas, where a Southern Baptist upbringing meant a structured approach to dinner time and plenty of the requisite fried chicken and dumplings. His first cooking gig was at the now-shuttered Zachary Jacques in Placerville, CA, owned by a husband-and-wife team whose familial setting drew him in. The wine helped, too; there was never any alcohol with meals in the Hollingsworth household.

He began at The French Laundry in 2001, working up the ranks and even traveling to New York to help launch Per Se, Keller’s New American venture just off Central Park. When Hollingsworth moved south to Los Angeles in 2012, he deliberately took his time getting to know the city and its culinary needs—and to marry his now-wife, Coco—before settling down professionally. The deliberation spawned a return to his roots. His first LA project, Barrel & Ashes, began its southern barbecue service on the famed Ventura Boulevard, where Hollingsworth and his team dished up crowd-favorite tri-tip sandwiches and cornmeal hoecakes to the masses, setting off a wave of modern barbecue restaurants in its wake. His next project, Otium, landed somewhere between The French Laundry and Barrel & Ashes on the extravagance spectrum, but offered an accessibility that all of Hollingsworth’s solo projects have focused on.

Hollingsworth leaned into the heritage of his adopted hometown, filling out the space with furniture and artwork from Angeleno artists (although the iconic “Inside Out, Outside In” mural near the entrance is by New York designer Stefan Sagmeister), and the heritage of his own family. Thanks to his mother’s habit of keeping handwritten recipes for decades, the ever-evolving menu often referenced dishes from his childhood—the biscuits come into play again—for influence. His mother-in-law’s Middle Eastern cooking (the family is Lebanese and Palestinian) is strictly through memory and eyeballing, but ingredients like tamarind and zaatar factored in to Otium’s lineup as well.

The business of being a chef demands innovation in order to stay relevant (“When I started at French Laundry, I didn’t even have an email address,” he quips) but never was that more apparent than during the height of the pandemic. Coco and Tim point to partnerships—brands like Home Depot and Williams Sonoma— as their lifeline through Otium’s shutdown, helping the family through an otherwise nerve wracking time. It also allowed Tim to continue to flex his creative culinary muscles, something that can be overshadowed by all of the logistical and economical demands of owning a restaurant. They have an ever-evolving five year plan that relies heavily on expansion as part of their continued success, all of which he sees as feeding back into the success of his projects.

There’s hope for additional ventures, in international locations, or even on screen. Hollingsworth has appeared on The Final Table and Top Chef, but he’s still getting used to the whole fame part of his status as a famous chef. “It’s not my forte” he says. “I grew up a shy person, and I’m a chef’s chef in that I’d really prefer to keep my head down.” But duty calls, and the more people who know Tim Hollingsworth, the more people will flock to his restaurants. Luckily, he has a built-in system to prevent star-chasing and clout-hoarding. There’s no time to get caught up in the business of being famous when you have four children to cook for. They really do keep it all in the family.