Scott Youkilis

Executive Chef and Owner

Scott Youkilis realized at a very young age that he had a passion for the restaurant business. Over the past 17 years, Youkilis has held a variety of positions—from server to line cook to manager to chef—eager to learn about every aspect of the business before realizing his own dream of opening his own restaurant, which he successfully did in 2005. In its first year of operation, Maverick was named the City’s best new restaurant by San Francisco magazine’s readers’ poll, proving that his strategy had indeed worked.

Scott attended Indiana University where he received a BS degree in Public Management. During his time there he worked in a gourmet deli, where he learned about food preparation and received an informal education in seasonal ingredients and food products from all over the world. He became fascinated by everything culinary and food-related and knew he wanted to further this education in a more formal manner.

Upon graduation he enrolled in the highly-regarded culinary program at Johnson & Wales University. During his three semesters there, Scott honed his culinary skills at the Odeon and Bar Odeon in Manhattan, under the supervision of his uncle who played a major role in getting him involved in the business, and also completed a three-month internship as a line and banquet cook at the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver, Colorado.

After receiving his Associate’s Degree, Scott moved across the country to what he admittedly describes as the culinary epicenter of the United States—San Francisco. As a line cook at North Star Restaurant, he began to truly understand the essentials of California cuisine and cooking and its influence on the kitchens across the country and world. Next he headed for the mountains of Tahoe where he accepted a position as line cook at the four-star resort, The Resort at Squaw Creek.

Scott realized that he missed the creativity and the cutting edge culinary community he found in the kitchens of San Francisco and moved back to the City that he has now called home for the past nine years. He happened upon a newly-opened restaurant— Sociale, where he knew one of the servers, Mike Pierce, and took a position as assistant manager and server. They realized that they both shared a similar vision, and that they would complement each other well, with Scott in the kitchen and Mike managing the front of the house and wine program—and thus, Maverick Restaurant was born.

In just four years of operation, Maverick has received numerous awards including Best Brunch 2006, 2007 by 7x7 Magazine as well as Best Weekend Brunch 2007, 2008, 2009 by the readers of San Francisco Magazine. In 2009, San Francisco Magazine awarded Maverick Best Comfort Food.

While not cooking on the line, Scott has been entrepreneurial and started a small hot sauce business, Youk’s Hot Sauce. The sauce was born at Maverick and became extremely popular with guests at brunch. Scott realized the sauce’s potential and thus began working with Mariquita Farm to hand produce a vintage, local, organic hot sauce available at Maverick, online and in retail stores in San Francisco and Boston. In 2009, the readers of San Francisco Magazine named it Best Local Product.