Steve Sando

Since 2001, Steve Sando has taken the lowly bean from a healthy but neglected, over-bred member of the vegetable family to a near superstar-status ingredient. Sando's company Rancho Gordo, grows heirloom and heritage varieties and works with influential chefs like Thomas Keller, Deborah Madison, Paula Wolfert and Annie Sommerville. Sando's seed-saving efforts and bean production provide professional and home chefs with the opportunity to literally eat American history. Sando's heirloom beans, along with corn and chiles, have become vital ingredients in the new American food revolution centered in the San Francisco Bay Area. In fact, Sando and Rancho Gordo were named Number Two on Saveur magazine's prestigious The Saveur 100 list for 2008. Rancho Gordo production is primarily in California. In addition to beans, they are promoting, growing and occasionally importing indigenous foods of the Americas, Sando constantly tours The Americas looking for rare, endangered and delicious samples to save and grow in his trial gardens in Napa, California. Sando's books include Heirloom Beans: Recipes from Rancho Gordo, co-written with Vanessa Barrington and with an introduction by Thomas Keller (The French Laundry Cookbook), (Chronicle Books, 2008), The Rancho Gordo Heirloom Bean Growers Guide (Timber Press 2011), Supper at Rancho Gordo (Rancho Gordo Press 2014) and The Rancho Gordo Vegetarian Kitchen (Rancho Gordo Press 2017) with Julia Newberry. Sando was named as one of Bon Appetit magazines Hot Ten, along with Daniel Boulud and Ubuntu's Jeremy Fox.