Eric Ziebold

Eric Ziebold (born 1972) is an award-winning American chef and restaurateur who was executive chef at CityZen, a restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental Washington hotel in Washington, D.C, from 2004-2014. The hotel announced CityZen's closure on December 6, 2014 due to Ziebold's leaving to open his own restaurant in downtown D.C. His new restaurant is scheduled to open in fall of 2015.

Early years

Ziebold, who was born in Iowa, began working in restaurants as a teenager after school at Café Maude with mentor chef Matt Nichols. Ziebold spent more time in the restaurant than in class while attending college at the University of Northern Iowa, and decided to transfer to the Culinary Institute of America. After spending some time at Wolfgang Puck's Spago in Beverly Hills, California, and Jeffrey Buben's Vidalia in Washington, D.C., in 1996 Ziebold joined Thomas Keller's The French Laundry in the Napa Valley in California. Ziebold stayed at The French Laundry until 2003, when he moved briefly to New York City to open Keller's new restaurant, Per Se.