LA-based Celebrity Chef Gino is a native of Parma, a city known as the true culinary breadbasket of Italy. A dynamic TV personality and an exuberant Emcee, Chef Gino has been using his contagious energy to raise American Families' Food IQ for the last 18 years.
Chef Gino is currently working on the second season of the ground breaking reality series on A&E "Born This Way".
During his 20+ years in the culinary field, Chef Gino has worked with many different talents; Rachel Ray, Jamie Oliver, Michelle Obama and Jennie Garth. He has also hosted hundreds of cooking classes and events. His TV and web credits include VH1’s Basketball Wives, A&E’s Born This Way, Disney’s Gino’s Kitchen, RAI1’s La Prova Del Cuoco, Junior TV’s Junior Chefs, NBC Web’s Garden Party and more. His Cook Book is titled “Chef Gino’s Taste Test Challenge.”
He has hosted Gino's Kitchen for the Disney Channel and starred in the Italian prime time cooking show "La prova del cuoco."
Nigel’s career in culinary arts started in 2007, after departing a successful career in the entertainment industry. Nigel is a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu as well as Morehouse College. Nigel has worked in kitchens spanning from Los Angeles to New Orleans. In New Orleans, Nigel learned under the tutelage of Chef/Icon Leah Chase and her grandson Chef Edgar “Dooky” Chase IV. In Los Angeles Nigel worked at The Kitchen for Exploring Foods, & The Peninsula Beverly Hills. More recently he was The Executive Chef for WME/IMG’s Corporate Restaurant Jack & Ben’s.
Nigel started TheFeast.LA, with the goal of creating memorable culinary experiences while using locally sourced and sustainable products. He has provided services for Hollywood elite, national music festivals, film productions & local fundraisers.
In 2013 Nigel was instrumental in bringing #Hashtaglunchbag to New Orleans, LA. In May of this same year he created The Nola Truck, a Food Truck specializing in giving Creole & Southern cuisine a contemporary twist. The truck has been featured on local news, Travel + Escape’s Rebel Without a Kitchen, & Adam Richman’s Fandemonium. Currently Nigel splits his time between curating Culinary Events, Hosting The Gumbo Pot Podcast, & cooking for private clients.
May Hennemann was born in Brooklyn, raised in St. Louis and is of Thai/Burmese/Chinese descent. Spending summers with family in Asia, she developed her love of Asian street food. Combined with a love for Julia Childs and curiosity about the culture of food, family and country, she decided to attend the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY six months after graduating from the University of Chicago. This eventually brought her to Los Angeles and a 16 year career in culinary education specializing in everything from classical French technique to Asian dumplings.
Ruth Kennison studied the art of being a chocolatier at The French Pastry School, the Callebaut Chocolate Academy, as well under M.O.F. Stephane Treand. Her infatuation with chocolate began with her first job in high school at a prominent sweets shop in Boston, where she grew up. Since then, Ruth has followed her dessert passions around the world – taste-tasting vanilla beans in Tahiti, selling homemade madeleines in Sydney, honing her chocolate skills in Asia alongside a former pastry chef from Spain’s El Bulli Restaurant and with chocolate greats in Paris.
Most recently, Ruth has been traveling around the “chocolate belt” of the equator learning as much as she can about where our beautiful chocolate comes from. Ruth has a passion for educating both children and adults about every aspect of the cocoa bean. Ruth launched her own chocolate company and website called Bonaparte Chocolate and she insists that all her new concoctions be tested by her husband, David, and son, Sebastian.
He was the kid who ran home from school to whip up his own after school snack, to make tomato soup from scratch or home-baked bread for his grilled cheese. Summers? In the garden growing salad and tomatoes in the rich black loam of his native Minnesota. After heading to college and on to building his own family his interest in the foods of the home developed as he was surrounded by great family cooks from the Caribbean, American SouthWest, Mexico, and the American South.
With a deep love of the foods of America, he enjoys culinary trips to the Southwest and South to learn about the culinary traditions in our own country. After more than a decade in the corporate world, Chef John returned to his great passion of food finding a position with a well known Culver City Restaurant Supply House, the perfect venue to develop and share his love of food. By repurposing an underused showcase kitchen he invited local chefs, cookbook authors and culinary instructors to use the space to share and teach. The idea was a hit giving Chef John the opportunity to hone his skills with chefs including Roy Choi (Kogi BBQ, A-Frame), Jason Neroni (Superba Snack Bar), Ray Garcia (Fig), Josiah Citrin (Melisse), the founders of Tacos Puntas Cabras, Farmer Alex Weiser of Weiser Family Farms, and cookbook authors Jacquay Pfieiffer (the Kings of Pastry) and Martha Rose Shulman (The Art of Vegetarian Cooking and NY Times Health Editor), Kevin West of Saving the Seasons and the Grand Dame of Southern Cooking Nathalie DuPree.
Carol has been cooking professionally for over thirty years. Since graduating from the California Culinary Academy’s professional cooking and pastry programs in 1985, she has cooked in many notable restaurants and developed a substantial resumé as a pastry chef, private chef, consultant, food stylist, caterer, blogger, on-camera chef, recipe developer and marketing consultant for print and on-camera productions. For the past twenty-four years, she has taught at the Epicurean School, L’Academie de Cuisine, the New School of Cooking and The Gourmandise School. Carol’s love of travel takes her once a year, as guest chef, to Raison d’art Retreats in Catalonia, Spain. In addition, she co-owns californiaculinaryretreats.com. Carol currently teaches private cooking classes and caters custom designed events and dinner parties.
