CASA Blog
Culinary Education

Simply put, you love food. You love finding the right produce at the farmer’s market, buying your meat from the butcher, and installing a gas range in your home. Nothing makes you happier than preparing food for family and friends and finding the newest places to eat to give you ideas for your next culinary […]

Are you asking yourself, “should I go to culinary school?” Becoming a chef can be a very satisfying–and rewarding–career. But it’s a competitive field filled with long hours, exacting work, and at times demanding clientele. Tastes come and go and you need to be able to adapt and evolve or risk being left behind. Late […]

It can seem like a glamorous–and lucrative–career choice: Big Name Chef. A celebrity chef that has their own cooking show, a chef de cuisine that heads up the most trendy restaurants in the biggest cities, or a private chef to the stars. The undeniable pull of a fast-paced and highly-rewarding job has made for a […]

Working in a professional kitchen can mean being on your feet for long hours, sometimes deep into the night. As a head chef, you’re back at it in the morning, looking for only the freshest products to bring back to the restaurant and preparing ingredients for the day’s menu. Working in a restaurant kitchen can […]

When Joey Mendes of Chino, California, first came to us, he had little more than a newfound passion for cooking. It had emerged after he’d left home, moved in with roommates, and found himself manning the stove. Now, Joey’s got a firsthand understanding of what it takes to work in the culinary arts, thanks to […]

CASA graduate Josmira Batista was on her way to becoming a nurse when she had the realization that nursing, as noble a career as it is, just wasn’t for her. Since then, Josmira’s love of food has grown, leading her to new awakenings and a whole new career path that’s full of promise, exploration, and […]

Already possessing her bachelor’s degree in business, Rachel Ulansey enrolled in CASA after life experiences and travels to different countries underscored just how passionate she was about food. We connected with the recent CASA graduate to learn more about her journey into the culinary arts, the intense, quick paced culinary training she received through CASA, […]

Recent CASA Schools Gourmet Chef program graduate Justin Zhao (San Francisco, CA) had spent two years completing his Associate of Arts degree in college with plans on pursuing a degree in Business when he realized he just wasn’t at all excited about his career path. After some serious soul searching, he came back to food. […]

After years working as a key member of an internal producing team for Scripps Network where he worked on content for HGTV and Travel Channel, Cody Woodside found himself merged out of a job when Scripps was acquired by The Discovery Channel. Rather than seek something else in production, Cody saw the forced hiatus as […]

Even in the field of the culinary arts, there’s something about learning on the job that can open the door to getting hired more quickly. Just ask CASA graduate Francisco Ahn, who got hired by mentor Chef Ken Takayama to work at Mélisse, a world-renowned fine dining restaurant in L.A., within a month of starting […]

From all outward appearances, Ronnie had it made: a wife, a family, and a successful career as the regional director for a major resort company. But something was missing. “Throughout my family line, from my great, great, great grandfather on down, all the men were the cooks in the family,” says Ronnie Dettman, who recently […]

CASA graduate Justin Zhao Connected with World-Renowned Chefs and Got Several Job Offers! When CASA grad Justin Zhao got an offer from our Career Services department to volunteer at the 2019 All Star Chefs Classic in Los Angeles, he jumped on the opportunity to put his newly acquired culinary skills to work. During the four […]