Chef Jeff Jackson stepping back at The Lodge after 22 years

Chef Jeff Jackson has moved into a new corporate role after 20 years as executive chef at The Lodge at Torrey Pines.

March 7, 2022 12 PM PT

Twenty-two years after becoming executive chef at the Lodge at Torrey Pines and a leader in San Diego’s farm-to-table culinary movement, Jeff Jackson is stepping back from the job to assume the newly created role of corporate culinary advisor. Taking Jackson’s place will be Kelli Crosson, who joined the Lodge in 2009 and has been serving as Jackson’s chef de cuisine at the Lodge’s signature restaurant, A.R. Valentien.

“It is a bittersweet combination of immense gratitude for his indelible contributions to The Lodge’s and Evans Hotels’ culinary program and a degree of sadness that we acquiesced to Jeff’s request to take a step back in his responsibilities,” Bill Gross, general manager of The Lodge at Torrey Pines, said in a statement.

In his new role, Jackson will help recruit and mentor culinary workers, be involved with onsite events and assist on culinary efforts at Evans’ other hotel restaurants.

Pam Kragen writes about San Diego County restaurants for the San Diego Union-Tribune. Email her at pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com.

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Pam Kragen

Pam Kragen is the arts and entertainment editor, as well as the chief theater, dining and opera critic, for the San Diego Union-Tribune. She joined the Union-Tribune staff in October 2012 after 27 years at the North County Times, where she served as the Arts & Features Editor, as well as the paper’s longtime arts writer and theater and opera critic. She is the co-founder of the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle. She holds a bachelor of arts degree in journalism from San Diego State University and completed fellowships in theater criticism at the University of Southern California and opera-classical music criticism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. And in 2022, she was chosen as one of the fellows in the prestigious National Critics Institute, run by the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterf, Conn.