What you might call a diverse background!  Have had pretty near every job imaginable, from amusement park employee, bartender, owning a construction company, and university professor.  Have a BS (NJIT), two masters (U of California, Berkeley) and PhD (U of Texas, Austin) - all in structural engineering.  That’s the non-culinary side.

Culinary education includes Judith Et Hopkins in San Francisco,;the American Baking Center (back when it was in Minneapolis); The Institue of Culinary Education (ICE) in Manhattan;, NY and the French Culinary Institute, also in Manhattan. In addition, I have spent time with the Bread Bakers Guild studying at Ecole Française de Boulangerie d'Aurillac in France. Have had multiple seminars elsewhere, my favorites being one with Harold McGee and one with Peter Reinhardt at Johnson-Wales in N.C.. One of these days I’ll finish my American Institute of Baking course....

I am very much a student of the art, and a day doesn’t go by in which I’m not cooking, testing, or researching food and recipes.  Last count, I had over 500 volumes in my cooking library.  I’m a  huge fan of Harold McGee, Shirely Corriher, and Alton Brown.   Jacques Pepin is a fantastic chef, and I think by far Morimoto is the top Iron Chef! Daniel Boulud and Thomas Keller are fantastic chefs.  The French Laundry is one of my favorite books, and the philosophy from that book really is what I believe in. I’ve re-read the forward a million times.  As I work on the site, I’ll be adding book reviews too - any good ones out there let me know please!!  (chef@luclaire.com)

I don’t slave away on the line anymore - past my prime on that, but every now and then I get the itch to jump back in.  Part time anyway....