Chef Alexandra Ceribelli is a leading expert and educator on operational sustainability within non-commercial food service operations and restaurants. She is currently the head chef and manager of Harvest, at Rutgers University, housed in the University’s Institute of Food, Nutrition, and Health.
Her inspiration spanning her nineteen-year long career in kitchens has been centered around creating operations that bridge contradictions that exist within our food system and restaurant environments.
Food is medicine, yet food is the culprit of many of severe public health crises. Our food system is responsible for over 40% of greenhouse gas emissions, and one-third of all food produced is wasted, while one in nine people are food insecure. These truths are complex and often overwhelming, especially when it comes to how we approach them within our food service establishments.
Facing these subjects head on, she is creating kitchen spaces that are adaptive to volatile food markets, climate change, and taking a delicious approach to environmental sustainability and public health with her innovative and globally inspired menus and non-traditional approaches to staff training. Her roadmap is to create kitchens of the future that can be flexible to our changing world and mediate many of the harmful effects of our industry.
Alexandra was formerly a Food Systems instructor and innovator of The Menus of Change Kitchen at the Culinary institute of America, until the Spring of 2022. Her career has spanned from Michelin star restaurants to scientific research vessels in the Arctic Circle, to a women and children’s homeless in West Philadelphia, and everything in between.