Nancy Silverton, for years one of Los Angeles’s leading chefs and restaurateurs loses everything with Madoff

L.A. Chef Another Madoff Victim
By PETE WELLS
Both Time and the Los Angeles Times report that Nancy Silverton’s investments were wiped out in the alleged multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme run by Bernard Madoff.

Ms. Silverton, for years one of Los Angeles’s leading chefs and restaurateurs, made more than $5 million when she sold La Brea Bakery in 2001, the Times reports. That money, she suggests, has allowed her to remain aloof from some of the hustling that pads the income of many chefs. “She said she had passed up a number of other business offers, such as launching a line of cookware or doing a reality TV show,” the Times reports. “But with her financial setback, ‘I might be a little more open’ to those opportunities in the future, said Silverton, who is currently writing her eighth cookbook.”

Ms. Silverton, who today owns Pizzeria Mozza and Osteria Mozza, learned that the money had disappeared when she was on her way to dinner. From Time:

The phone call came for Nancy in mid-December when she was in Napa wine country with four friends. They were on their way to have dinner at the famous restaurant the French Laundry. “My father called my cell,” she said. “He said, ‘We’ve lost everything.’ I went into a kind of surreal shock.”

For Silverton, 54, and the many others like her, she’ll have to start over. “My entire retirement, my kids’ college funds, trust funds, were all invested in this. All I have is my restaurant now. We just can’t believe it.”