Chef Lance Nitahara and Sechan Park. Photo courtesy of Lance Nitahara.
They say if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. For Chef Lance Nitahara, who teaches cooking fundamentals at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) and coaches most of the school’s culinary competitions, including the SkillsUSA Championships, excellence calls for more than technique and theory: Pressure is required.
“You will not grow more as a chef any other way than through competition … You learn precision, but it is really about organization and a mindset,” he says. “That is something I cannot teach otherwise.”
Leading by example, Nitahara has scored victories on the Food Network’s “Chopped” and “Iron Chef America.” Earlier this year, he took second place at the 2025 U.S. Culinary Open, where he was assisted by Sechan Park, whom he’d coached on the CIA’s SkillsUSA team. That competition came on the heels of Nitahara wrapping up a year as a runner-up of the American Culinary Federation Chef Educator of the Year.
“Sechan is a prodigy. When I coached him at SkillsUSA, he destroyed the competition. He may have been the best competitor ever at the national competition, and had high school students following him around asking questions. It was like cooking groupies,” Nitahara laughs.
More recently, Nitahara served as a faculty mentor on the new Netflix series “Next Gen Chef,” overseeing a cast of 21 rising chefs vying for a prize of $500,000. The show was filmed at the Hyde Park, N.Y., CIA campus, where Nitahara works. When the production put the word out they were looking for instructors with experience in competition, his name kept coming up.
He describes his role as a kitchen proctor as serving as both a coach and mentor to the chefs who were competing. “I got into competition mode and was looking at their organization and cleanliness of their station. I have a standard for the students I coach and it is very, very high,” Nitahara says. “The ‘Next Gen’ chefs were different and it was more like they were cooking in their restaurants, so I had to rein that back in a bit.”
Carving a Unique Path
Nitahara’s love of cooking began young — at his childhood home in Hawaii — by his mother’s side. As a young man, while working in his father’s construction business, his fiancee (now wife) surprised him with the gift of a cooking class. At the time, he’d often prepare dinner for them both and enjoyed experimenting with new flavors.
Nitahara was learning the five foundational sauces: béchamel, velouté, espagnole, tomato,and Hollandaise, when his Hollandaise “broke,” or separated. He recalls the instructor didn’t just tell him how to fix it, he explained what had happened at the molecular level.
“For me it was this lightbulb going off in my head. To pair science and cooking, I knew this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” he says.
In short order, he enrolled as a student at CIA, where Nitahara earned the High Impact Leader Scholarship, the Outstanding Culinary Arts Student Award, was a member of the student-faculty team that won the Marc Sarrazin Trophy for Best Seafood Display at the 2007 New York Salon, in addition to numerous medals in student cooking competitions.
Nitahara completed his externship at the prestigious Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., then served professionally as a culinary artist in residence/executive chef for the Chelsea Music Festival in New York City; sous chef at El Capitan Lodge on Prince of Wales Island, Alaska; garde manger and baker’s assistant at Latitude 22 in Manoa, Hawaii, executive chef/co-owner of The Good Life Catering in Honolulu; and executive chef at Camp-of-the-Woods, a Christian resort and conference center in central New York State. This experience, in particular, was spiritually transformational. Nitahara went on to co-author the cookbook, “ Divine Dining: Foods From the Bible.”
Ten years ago he joined the CIA faculty, where his teaching includes a strong focus on the science behind food. Nitahara also co-leads the student Culinary Christian Fellowship Club, in addition to competition coaching. He explains that as a coach he works with students who are actively competing and those who want to participate but were not selected for a team or who otherwise were ineligible to compete.
“The competition mindset is definitely part technique, creativity and actual cooking skills, but it is also about organization, cleanliness at your station, motivation and work ethic. Competing is a ton of hard work and technical know-how to formulate a menu in their mind,” he adds. “This makes them a better cook all around.”
“I see the kind of growth in these students and that is one reason I became a teacher — to see students hone their skills. I get to see them move on to the next stage, taking their career and going to places they never dreamed they would.”
With years of experience in restaurants, Nitahara says he’s felt the glory of running kitchens. “Being in the trenches is good, it was fast-paced and exciting, and a creative outlet for a lot of things.” However, he finds that teaching and coaching at CIA provides a work-life balance that he was missing.
“This is something not just in culinary arts, people in a lot of other industries have this struggle. I found that I loved teaching and imparting information to the younger generation, so they can take that and be successful in their careers.”
In particular, he sees how SkillsUSA provides enormous value to students.
“Our workforce in America is top heavy. When it comes down to it, you have parents telling their kids to get an education and a white collar job, but they often don’t succeed. We are now seeing a resurgence in the trades and I’m really glad for that,” he says. “We need carpenters and masons and cosmetologists, otherwise this country is nothing. SkillsUSA is such a great organization because it encourages and rewards them.”
On the Web
Watch Chef Lance Nitahara in action on Chopped: Pancakes, Guava Nectar & Lamb Hearts (S8, Ep. 5 Food Network).
