What Happens When a Two-Michelin-Star Chef Walks Into a Fast Casual Restaurant?

Most Michelin-star chef stories follow a familiar arc: years of grueling kitchen work, a fine-dining flagship, critical praise, and a career spent behind tasting menus that most people will never experience on a regular Tuesday. Daniel Patterson's story took that arc and bent it.

After earning two Michelin stars at Coi in San Francisco, landing on the World's 50 Best Restaurants list, and winning a James Beard Award for Best Chef: West, he walked into a 15-unit fast casual poke chain in Los Angeles and asked a different question entirely.

“What if fine-dining technique could fuel an everyday meal?”

That chain is Sweetfin. And the answer is already on the menu.

Here's how a Michelin-star chef and a California poke brand joined forces to create one of the most exciting fine dining meets fast casual experiments happening in LA right now.

Who Is Daniel Patterson? 

Before understanding what Daniel Patterson brings to Sweetfin, it helps to understand where he's been. Patterson is a self-taught chef who started washing dishes at 14 and opened his first restaurant, Babette's, in Sonoma at 25. 

By 2006, he had launched Coi in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood, a restaurant that earned two Michelin stars, four stars from the San Francisco Chronicle, and a spot on the World's 50 Best Restaurants at No. 49.

Patterson wasn't just cooking at a high level. He was reshaping what California cuisine could be. Coi was known for foraging wild ingredients, using aromas and essential oils alongside dishes, and pushing a vegetable-forward, technique-heavy approach that influenced an entire generation of West Coast chefs. Alumni of his kitchen went on to open their own acclaimed spots, including Rich Table, Commis, and Taco Maria.

But Patterson has always been drawn to the question of access. In 2016, he partnered with LA chef Roy Choi to launch LocoL, a fast food concept that won the LA Times Restaurant of the Year award for its ambition to bring real, nourishing food to underserved communities. After Coi closed in 2022, Patterson's focus shifted even further toward making high-quality food available to more people, not fewer. That instinct is exactly what brought him to Sweetfin.

What a Michelin Star Chef Saw in a Poke Brand

Sweetfin wasn't a random landing spot. Founded in 2015 in Santa Monica, the brand was one of the first standalone poke concepts outside of Hawaii and has spent a decade building a reputation on scratch cooking, sustainable sourcing, and a 100% gluten-free menu made in-house daily across every location.

As co-founder Seth Cohen explained in a Flaunt magazine profile, Patterson's vegetable-forward ethos and precision-driven technique were a natural supplement to the brand's existing California-Asian identity. Cohen wasn't looking for a celebrity name to slap on a bowl. He wanted someone who could bring Michelin-level rigor to already premium ingredients and push the culinary team into new territory without abandoning what made Sweetfin work in the first place.

Patterson saw it from the other side. In a conversation with The Prep, Cohen described the collaboration as a genuine "facelift" for the brand's culinary soul. Patterson helped the team explore deeper textures and temperatures, applying his fine-dining systems to a fast casual format that already operated as a scratch kitchen.

Inside the Innovation Kitchen: Where Fine Dining Meets Fast Casual

The Sweetfin Innovation Kitchen launched on January 12, 2026, at the brand's West Third Street flagship in Beverly Grove. This is the laboratory where Patterson and Sweetfin's culinary team developed a new generation of menu items, and it's where the fine-dining meets fast-casual philosophy plays out in real, tangible food.

For the first time in Sweetfin's decade-long history, the menu expanded beyond raw poke into warm bowls and cooked proteins. Patterson developed several new items that have since been rolled out across all 15 California locations.

The New Warm Bowl Lineup Includes:

• Miso Roasted Salmon Bowl with avocado, seaweed-cucumber salad, pickled carrot, edamame, and yuzu kosho mayo over brown rice
• Spicy Jidori Chicken Grain Bowl with soy-miso roasted chicken, gochujang sauce, roasted broccoli, sesame-ginger slaw, and a crunchy seed-and-nut mix over white rice
• Steak Bowl with sous-vide tri-tip, roasted Japanese sweet potato, pickled red onion, scallions, arugula, and a signature steak sauce over quinoa

New Salads That Round Out the Menu:

• Chopped Salad with tahini-sesame-ginger dressing
• Crispy Rice Salad with chili vinaigrette
• Kale and Seaweed Salad with creamy lemon-white soy-miso-tofu dressing

Each salad can be topped with miso salmon, roasted chicken, tri-tip, or tofu.

Patterson also created four to five new house-made sauces, including a chili vinaigrette and yuzu kosho mayo, that bridge the raw poke flavors Sweetfin is known for with the new menu's warmer, heartier direction. Every sauce is made from scratch daily at each location, a kind of operational commitment that separates this from a typical fast-casual menu update.

What This Means for You: How to Experience It

Whether you're someone who follows Daniel Patterson's career or you've never heard of him and just want a better lunch, the Patterson-Sweetfin collaboration is built to work for both.

If you want to taste the Innovation Kitchen menu firsthand, start at the West Third Street location in Beverly Grove, where it all began. But the warm bowls, salads, and Patterson's new sauces are now available at every Sweetfin across Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego.

Not sure what to order? The Miso Roasted Salmon Bowl is the most direct expression of what happens when a Michelin star chef's precision meets Sweetfin's sustainably sourced fish and house-made sauces. The Steak Bowl is the one to try if you want to see how sous-vide technique translates to a $15 fast casual meal. Or stick with the signature poke and Build Your Own Bowl, which remains one of the best customizable lunch experiences in Southern California.

For groups and events, Sweetfin catering brings the full menu to your table with the same scratch-made quality.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Daniel Patterson?

Daniel Patterson is a James Beard Award-winning, two-Michelin-starred chef known for his flagship restaurant Coi in San Francisco and for pioneering modern California cuisine. He now collaborates with Sweetfin on their Innovation Kitchen menu.

What is the Sweetfin Innovation Kitchen?

It's Sweetfin's culinary R&D concept, based at their West Third Street location in Beverly Grove, where Patterson and the team develop new menu items, including warm bowls, salads, and house-made sauces.

Is the Innovation Kitchen menu available at all Sweetfin locations?

Yes. The new warm bowls, salads, sides, and sauces developed through the Innovation Kitchen have rolled out across all 15 Sweetfin locations in California.

Is Sweetfin's menu still gluten-free with the new items?

Yes. Sweetfin's entire menu remains 100% gluten-free, including every new warm bowl, salad, sauce, and side developed with Patterson.

Does Sweetfin still serve poke bowls?

Absolutely. Six signature poke bowls remain on the menu alongside the full Build Your Own Bowl system. The new items expand what's available without replacing the originals.

Get Your Bowls from a Two-Michelin-Star Chef

The partnership between a two-Michelin-star chef and a fast casual poke brand isn't a stunt. It's a proof of concept. Daniel Patterson's career has always bent toward making great food more available, and Sweetfin has spent a decade building the infrastructure to do exactly that. 

Together, they've created something worth paying attention to, whether you care about Michelin stars or just want a bowl that makes your Tuesday lunch feel genuinely good. 

Explore the full Sweetfin menu to taste it for yourself.