Dave Arnold is an American chef from New York City. He is a leader in molecular gastronomy.
Arnold grew up in the New York area and began tinkering with restaurant equipment after earning his MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts. For an art project that required a 360-degree view of the inside of an oven he re-fabricated a traditional range with glass walls. After meeting Chef Wylie Dufresne, Arnold became even more passionate about all things culinary - the high-tech cooking movement in particular - and focused his engineering and inventing skills on professional and home cooking.
In 2004, Arnold founded the Museum of Food and Drink to promote learning about the history and culture of food. In 2005 The French Culinary Institute tapped him to head its new Culinary Technology department.[1] As director, Arnold is dedicated to helping chefs achieve their goals using new technologies, techniques, and ingredients. With The FCI's VP of Culinary Arts, Nils Norén, and Harold McGee, he also teaches tech classes, including those that cover sous vide, low-temperature cooking and hydrocolloids. Together with Nils Norén, Arnold also writes a blog on new Culinary Technology developments at The FCI, Cooking Issues.[2]
Arnold is Food Arts magazine's Contributing Editor for Equipment & Food Science. He writes equipment and book reviews as well as longer articles, including one on molecular gastronomy which had been submitted by Food Arts for a 2007 James Beard Foundation Award. He frequently lectures at leading industry conferences including The National Restaurant Show and The International Hotel, Motel and Restaurant Show, and has been a featured speaker at the 2006 and 2007 Modavi "Taste 3" conferences, where he spoke on high-tech cocktails. Arnold and his work at The FCI have been covered in several publications, including Food & Wine,[3] Time,[4] The Economist[5] and Popular Science;[6] his own hi-tech kitchen was featured in New York Magazine. He is frequently quoted in Jeffrey Steingarten's columns for Vogue. Arnold has served on think-tanks for companies such as Unilever, offering his insights on the future of cooking.