Welcome to the Chef Studio

The Chef Studio  

Offering specialized culinary training, for professionals and amateurs, focused on French and Italian cooking, and in support of local agriculture .

Robert Reynolds is an educator and chef who learned his craft in France and in San Francisco. When he told his mentor, Josephine Arlado, about studying in France with Madeleine Kamman, she answered, “Because you are going to be with the best, I will treat you differently.” Their teachings framed the mission of the Chef Studio. Cooks of all stripes gather around the stove and table for two months. Like a mentor, Robert in turn help shapes their development and ambition, one on one.

The Chef Studio in no way resembles the experience of a culinary academy. We do not try to fit culinary education into the mold of junior college, nor do we pretend to be a trade school. Our training of cooks involves passing on a cultural heritage, supported by skills and information grounded in tradition, memory and stories. These are supplemented by experience and ideas in the same manner that Reynolds received his training from his teachers and mentors.

When people who work in restaurants, but don’t have training, realize that they want to commit to being a food professional, they understand the need for an education. The appeal of the training at the Chef Studio is that it advances individual skills and understanding directly in ways that institutions with large numbers of students competing for attention cannot do.

Training others is a serious matter in the same way that running a business is serious. Once a student leaves they expect that the skills they’ve learned will help them stand out from the competition. Robert trains cooks to develop their own signature and to leave feeling more sure of themselves and of the skills they possess. Learning to be good at something shapes your manner and composure. Robert’s goal then is to offer a solid foundation of information (method, technique, physics, chemistry, culture, history) that allows cooks to apply their intelligence to their life as well as to their business.

Finally, Robert believes the art of well-being marries well with the subject of feeding people. They constitute the arts of the table, and this is the domain of education at the Chef Studio.

Photo by Dan Root