Patrick Jamon

Career Jamon apprenticed at Pic and became a chef cuisinier under Claude Peyrot at Le Vivarois in Paris. Jamon left Le Vivarois and immigrated to the United States in 1981, aged 28, with $500 to his name and no knowledge of English. He started working at the high-end restaurant Les Anges in Los Angeles, where he managed its kitchens and was a partner.

In 1987 he moved his family to Hawaii to work as the executive chef at the Naneloha resort hotel. At the time of his departure from Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times lamented the city's loss of what the paper considered "one of Los Angeles' most talented French chefs".

The Jamon family fell in love with Costa Rica on surfing trips in the 1990s and decided to relocate to the island in 2008, where he opened his own restaurant called Villa Deevena the following year.