A Life More Tasty
At Joey Nerenberg’s Infusion Culinary cooking school won’t make you a chef, but it will teach you to make fine food a way of life
By Zach Reff

If you’re considering going to professional chef school, you’d better be a masochist, because, according to chef Joey Nerenberg, teachers at these schools are mean. If you can’t stand the heat, then get out of the chef school kitchen. And basic, non-professional cooking courses? Too simple, says Nerenberg.

Infusion Culinary, a new cooking school in San Diego opened and run by Nerenberg, on the other hand, is a hybrid—somewhere between a professional school and a basic cooking course. Nerenberg isn’t mean and his school is anything but rudimentary. At Infusion Culinary, students master the skills they need to be comfortable in any kitchen and to create inspired meals for themselves and their families. Because, as Nerenberg points out, “Cooking is a very cultural and social thing.”

Nerenberg founded Infusion Culinary this year after a two-year stint as a chef-instructor at the Art Institute of California. “There are culinary schools galore out there,” admitted Nerenberg, but he realized that no one in San Diego was offering a class quite like he had in mind. Rather than teaching students individual cuisines or recipes, Nerenberg designed Infusion Culinary with the goal of teaching people techniques and skills that will allow them to walk into a kitchen and create. It is a hands-on school with small classes, one that aims to teach its students through practice, knowledge and fun. He wants people to be able to relax, entertain, and enjoy their guests while cooking a great meal at the same time. “When you cook for someone, you’re showing love for them, that you care,” said Nerenberg. “You need to connect to the people you’re cooking for.”

“I could make myself an omelet or throw together something simple but I really didn’t have any cooking skills,” said Eric Johnson, 31, a mortgage banker who, before enrolling in the very first class offered by Infusion Culinary, had very little cooking knowledge.

“For me, I didn’t know where to start. I would only do things I was very familiar with. I wouldn’t take any chances,” said Johnson. But after completing the five-week long basic essentials cooking class he emerged with a newfound confidence in the kitchen. In addition to learning basic cooking techniques like sautéing and roasting, he was also taught how to pick the right knife, and what materials your pots and pans should be made of. “It was very interesting and really informative,” said Johnson.

Johnson was in top form at a gourmet appetizer party that concluded his class the night of February 22. He and his fellow classmates methodically prepared and served a host of artfully plated noshes for friends and family, invited to watch them display their newly learned cooking prowess. The students worked slowly and proudly, taking their time to make things just right. While a large kitchen can often be a hectic environment, the students seemed relaxed and joyous. And the food? Restaurant quality.

Johnson stood by an immense stove insuring that chicken for a dish featuring a tangy vinegar sauce was done just right. Meanwhile his classmates were hard at work preparing delicacies such as slightly spicy ahi poke (raw tuna) atop cucumber wafers and bruschetta piled high with caramelized onions. Not crunchy. Just right.

As the students worked, Nerenberg walked calmly around the room demonstrating cooking techniques and offering bits of wisdom. Did you know it’s a faux-pass to serve round rice molds with Asian cuisine (round foods are reserved for honoring the dead)?

Nerenberg seems to possess a near encyclopedic knowledge of cuisine and is equal parts professor, comic and sensei. His students address him only as “Chef Joey”, partly because he asks them to, but also because they have such respect and admiration for him.

“Chef Joey is really well-rounded. You could get somebody that really knows cooking but they suck at teaching. I like the fact that he has proven himself in the profession and in the class setting he wasn’t dry or boring,” said Johnson.

Nerenberg is a native San Diegan who didn’t discover his love of cooking until later in life. In fact, the jovial food sage admits that once, before his culinary training, he scorched some stuffed peppers he was attempting to cook for a Thanksgiving dinner. He spent years working in the financial sector of the corporate world and managed to generate nearly half a billion dollars in new product sales while working for American Express Financial Services in Minneapolis, Minnesota. But after some time, his corporate career left him feeling unfulfilled. “I suppose like a lot of people in corporate America, I hit a wall and got tired of it,” said Nerenberg.

Wanting to pursue a life more tasty, Nerenberg moved to Hawaii with his family to attend the Culinary Institute of the Pacific. “It occurred to me one day that running a kitchen, especially commercially, or even doing a dinner party at home, is just like running a systems project or a project introduction,” said Nerenberg. “But, instead of having six months or a year you have usually 18 hours or less.” Nerenberg loved the speed of cooking and the way in which chefs receive instant feedback for their work.

In a moment he describes as an epiphany, Nerenberg realized he could combine his business skills with his newfound cooking knowledge and start Infusion Culinary. He moved back to San Diego and began cooking and teaching. An astute businesses sense still flows through his veins and he has tons of idea to improve and expand Infusion Culinary. In the future the school will offer breadmaking classes, pastry classes, and day classes. Nerenberg even has plans to buy his own kitchen so the school has a home base. He also offers private lessons and is starting a corporate cooking workshop.

“If you want to know how to cook, the food channel is not where you go,” said Nerenberg, although he credits the popularity of cooking channels with creating clients for his school. Here, in a place Nerenberg describes as, “the land of silly cooking trends”, the only thing that will prepare you for that upcoming dinner party are skills—cold, hard, skills. “If people don’t walk out of my class with applicable skills then I have failed miserably,” said Nerenberg. “We don’t do recipes. We teach people how to cook.”

Infusion Culinary offers a number of different classes catering to many different skill levels including 5-week and 12-week long sessions. To find out more visit them on the web at www.infusionculinary.com or call (866) 388-COOK.

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