Nothing pleased Harold quite so much as the opportunity to help others achieve their dreams. He founded his school, the San Diego Culinary Institute, for nothing else so much as to help others. It was the culmination of his dream.
Harold was born in South Africa and immigrated to the United States as a teenager, where he began a career in the culinary arts that was to last over 40 years. He studied Food Chemistry at the Illinois Institute of Technology before co-founding, with his parents, the Silicon Valley landmark restaurant and catering concern, Meyberg's. After decades of serving Presidents, movie stars, and the mavericks of the microchip revolution, Harold sold his business and pursued a new career in education.
After 6 years as a teacher in Santa Clara County the California Culinary Academy tapped him to serve as Managing Director of their La Mesa campus. When, after a corporate merger, CCA closed that campus, Harold and his wife, Lili, founded SDCI with a simple mission: to build a better culinary school.
Relying on his extensive experience — as an entrepreneur, a leader, and as a culinary educator — he created a program inspired by the European tradition of the "Commis Culinaire," or apprentice training regimen. He created a program that taught techniques, not recipes; that focused on hands-on training, in well-equipped kitchen classrooms, limited class sizes, and taught by instructors possessing superior qualifications. A program designed around a concept of mentorship and the classic relationship between the Chef and the apprentice. Ideals that SDCI still holds today.
Sadly Harold passed away in March 2004. But before he died, he passed his vision on to his son, David, who refined it and recruited the finest Chef instructors from around the world to bring it to life as the Commis Culinary Program.
The Commis Culinary Method™ of culinary training embodies each of Harold's original ideals. This latest evolution of his original program incorporates the latest thinking in the science of education, expanded partnerships with the Executive Chefs managing world-renowned kitchens, hotels, and resorts, and revolutionary course work designed to unlock the mysteries of flavor to the culinary student.