ESP Biography



BENJAMIN GAIARIN, Stanford Senior and Chef



Major: Symbolic Systems

College/Employer: Stanford

Year of Graduation: 2019

Picture of Benjamin Gaiarin

Brief Biographical Sketch:

I'm a Stanford senior studying Symbolic Systems. I'm an AI engineer, a policy researcher, and an environmentalist.

And I once had a career as a professional chef. As a high schooler, I spent two summers working as a breakfast chef and apprentice sous chef in a restaurant in Tuscany, Italy. I taught cooking classes and ran a catering business in my hometown of Reston, Virginia during the academic year. And I wrote about the food world and shared many of my recipes on my blog, BenGusto.com.

At Stanford, I've been learning more about how people connect through food by being involved with a number of food projects, including: cooking in student-led pop-up dinners, orchestrating a culinary arts event with spoken word performances, organizing special dinners for community discussions, volunteering in community gardening projects, leading cooking classes, and brewing beer.

Anand is a dear friend and incredibly talented designer and food enthusiast. Anand and I are putting together this class to share some of our learnings about the visual aspect of food with students. We're so excited!



Past Classes

  (Clicking a class title will bring you to the course's section of the corresponding course catalog)

A7072: Culinary Artists: Playing With Your Food in Splash Spring 2019 (May. 04 - 05, 2019)
Your eyes can taste, too. In fact, they make your most important taste of the meal: the very first one. We will open the world of culinary play, allowing students to gain a new sense of confidence in their artistic abilities and cooking know-how. With plating techniques like quenelle, shmears, foams, and garnishes, students will expand their culinary tool belt that they can use in their daily lives. The class is organized around a set of hands-on activities in which students plate a variety of pre-made ingredients and sauces, learning as they go! It doesn’t take expensive, fancy food to have a beautiful and meaningful plate.