Since 2010, private chef dining to full service catered events, Sea Stars Catering & Events is a chef’s collaborative catering company, using years of professionally trained and restaurant chef experience. Inspired by foods foraged in the wilds of Big Sur and Monterey County and the bountiful local farms, to showcase unique, seasonal menus custom designed for each client. Event design and full or partial planning services offered as well.
Jamie Jarrard chef/owner/lead planner at Sea Stars Catering,
After receiving her Grand Diploma in Culinary Arts from the French Culinary Institute in NYC in 2005, Jamie cooked in a variety of restaurants in New York City and staged at Berkeley’s Chez Panisse, her love of Big Sur and the bay area brought her to work as head pastry chef for 5 years at Sierra Mar at the Post Ranch Inn, where she developed an extensive knowledge of pastry arts and wedding cake design. She attended San Francisco Baking Institute’s Custom Wedding Cake course. She discovered her love for catering when she began working with a local band promoter, FolkYEAH! Events back in 2007. Cooking custom, seasonal meals for the musicians backstage and on tour in venues all across the state of California, Chef Jamie learned the fun way how to improvise to create a stellar meal by showering them with the glorious seasonal, local, bounty of Monterey area. She then started catering and planning the weddings for some of those same musicians she had made an impression on when they performed in Big Sur. She fell in love with the planning process and cooking for such festive events such as weddings. She has catered, planned and managed weddings, private parties, music festivals throughout Big Sur and up and down the coast of California. TOMS shoes, Joanna Newsom and Andy Samberg, Arcade Fire, Cat Power, Will Oldham, Fleet Foxes, Band of Horses, Bright Eyes, Silver Jews, Pegi Young, Gillian Welch, Jon Paul Jones and The Beach Boys are just a few of her notable clients. Partnered with talented Chef Paul Corsentino in 2020, Jamie is thrilled to get to focus more on the planning and design part of helping clients build special events that run seamlessly.
Paul Corsentino chef/owner at Sea Stars Catering, brings more than a decade of cosmopolitan big city experience to Monterey. With an honest and bucolic approach to coastal American cooking, Corsentino works closely with local foragers, fisherman and farms to infuse authentic ingredients from the surrounding landscape into his creative menus.
Most recently, Chef Corsentino was the Executive Chef at Saltwood and also The Sur House Restaurant at Ventana Big Sur, where he found a passion for local and foraged ingredients from Big Sur and the Monterey Bay as well as the Central Coast.
A graduate of the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco, Corsentino began his culinary career in 2002 at the nationally acclaimed MK in Chicago where he was Chef de Partie. He then headed east, serving as Chef Tournant at BOULEY in New York City where he worked closely with Cesar Ramirez, an innovative chef whose use of French techniques helped Corsentino cultivate and refine what would become his own trademark style.
Subsequent positions included Executive Sous Chef at ROUGE TOMATE on the Upper East Side where Corsentino created truly seasonal fare with locally sourced products and then Chef de Cuisine at DUMONT in Brooklyn’s vibrant Williamsburg neighborhood where he created elevated American-style comfort food.
Corsentino’s final stint in New York, before moving to the west coast, was as Executive Chef of THE NATIONAL at The Benjamin Hotel in New York City. He worked with celebrated chef and restaurateur, Geoffrey Zakarian, who was an influential mentor.
Corsentino has proven he can handle the heat in the kitchen, having assisted Zakarian in winning the fourth season of Food Network’s “The Next Iron Chef, Super Chefs” in 2011 and making multiple appearances alongside Zakarian on “Iron Chef America.” Corsentino has also appeared on “Simply Ming” cooking alongside Ming Tsai showcasing the flavors of Monterey Bay.
Corsentino is a regular participant in Pebble Beach Food and Wine Festival and has participated in many other dining festivities. Chef Corsentino currently resides in Seaside, California
