"Top Chef" season 15 competitor Bruce Kalman visited ICE’s Los Angeles campus in June to demonstrate his best-selling pasta. The former executive chef and co-owner of Northern Italian restaurant Union in Pasadena, California, has appeared on the Food Network and Esquire Network, received a James Beard Award nomination for Rising Star Chef and founded Bk Hospitality Group. When he's not developing new concepts, Chef Kalman's strumming his guitar, hanging with his young son and running a pickle company called BK Brinery.

At ICE, our mission is to help students find their culinary voice — that creative drive within each of us that determines how we express ourselves through food. Whether with a career training program, a recreational course in cookies or a special event featuring culinary entrepreneurs, we’ll give you the tools to hone your culinary creativity.

Los Angeles campus Lead Chef-Instructor Louis Eguaras knows first-hand what goes on inside the White House kitchen. Born in the Philippines, Eguaras first worked as a dishwasher and line cook at a tavern in Delaware at age 15. In 1991, he completed Navy boot camp, trained at the Naval Academy in culinary arts and was recruited to work at Camp David upon graduation. He was one of just two recruits chosen from a pool of 249 candidates vying for the prestigious post. From there, Eguaras joined the White House culinary staff where he cooked for celebrities, dignitaries and, of course, the first family. Chef Eguaras holds a fourth-degree black belt in Hawaiian Kenpo, and while that didn’t factor into his...

Recently, at a talk for the Greater New York Dietetic Association, I was asked to share my thoughts on food waste, access and education. I’ve focused on food waste in the past, but access to food is not something we talk about enough and I appreciated the opportunity to address it.

ICE alum Tom Coughlan (Culinary Arts/Culinary Management, 2012) is never not adding to his culinary repertoire. Just a few months after graduating from ICE, he started hosting pop-up dinners in Brooklyn, creating bold dishes using hyper-seasonal products, some of which he foraged himself. Raw mackerel with foraged pears and handmade pasta with foraged acorns were a couple of the crowd favorites. Since then, he’s competed on Chopped, worked for a number of high-end restaurants and spent a year as head chef of Brooklyn’s beloved Sunken Hundred.

I’ll spare you the standard “When I was kid … summertime/hot day … watermelon juices dripping down my chin … aww, memories” introduction. Instead, I’ll proudly tell you that watermelon is the first food I ever grew myself. Okay, this might still fall under the category of a “When I was a kid” intro, but bear with me.