Chef Mike Ventura Bio

For as long as I can remember I always wanted to be a chef. In my teens I worked as a short order cook and was bitten by “the restaurant bug.” There was no turning back. My fascination with cooking grew greater each day and I decided to pursue my passion as a career.

After graduating from high school, I enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, widely regarded as the Harvard of culinary schools. At that time, the kitchens were ruled by salty, short-tempered chefs from around the world. This was real old-school training. The curriculum focused on the fundamentals of classic French cuisine beginning with stock making, and soups and sauces, and later progressing to all aspects of professional cooking. After studying cuisines such as Mediterranean, Asian, Latin and even healthy cooking, I realized how the “building blocks” strategy could be applied to all styles of cooking. Each cuisine used its own set of basic techniques and ingredients which provided the base for other dishes to evolve from. Every cuisine had recipes, but the underlying techniques were infinitely more valuable.

In 2003, while working in Hell’s Kitchen NYC, I was diagnosed with diabetes. My symptoms included fatigue, excessive thirst and frequent trips to the bathroom. The diagnosis was the biggest gut-punch I have ever experienced. How could my career as a chef continue when so many things I cooked were “bad” for me? Admittedly, I took the news too lightly and continued on as I had been. After a few years and a scary wakeup call, I knew that I had to make serious lifestyle changes to avoid the imminent complications of uncontrolled diabetes. But what changes? I still wanted to be a chef! It was then that I committed to cook, eat and live well by modifying my diet and lifestyle. This commitment led me to develop the Type 2 Chef approach.

Type 2 Chef draws on my years of living with diabetes as well as my cooking experience, applying the same concept of fundamentals and building blocks to produce meals that are lower in refined carbs and big on flavor. I modified some classic recipes to be more healthful and I developed many other healthy and tasty recipes from scratch.

Living with diabetes doesn’t mean a lifetime of steamed chicken and bland vegetables. It is still possible to enjoy bold, fresh flavors while enjoying a variety of foods. My mission is to teach those living with diabetes to make food choices that taste great and fit into a self-care plan to manage blood sugar levels.

Don’t give up on food! I look forward to working with you.

Chef Mike Ventura CIA ’84

My culinary résumé includes:

• Decades of professional cooking experience in top New York City restaurants, including:
  • Bouley, 4-star French fine dining restaurant
  • Le Madri, Chelsea, famous for its Tuscan cuisine
  • Hotel InterContinental- European Hotel Group
  • Judson Grill, a midtown icon
• 5 years as Chef/Instructor at the renowned Institute of Culinary Education, NYC
• 15 years as a Freelance Chef and Culinary Instructor