Steven Jenkins

Coming Up

Food innovation and entrepreneurship set the frame for Steven Jenkins’s work at Saint Louis University, where he served as program director until 2017. The role sat between classroom theory and operational reality, with the focus on how ideas move from concept to implementation in food. In the same period, he also served as assistant professor in the nutrition and dietetics department at Saint Louis University until 2017, bringing academic weight to questions of how food is studied, taught, and organized. By 2017, Jenkins had moved into culinary operations at Brightwater: A Center for the Study of Food at NorthWest Arkansas Community College. The shift brought the work closer to daily kitchen practice, while still keeping food study at the center of the brief. Alongside that role, he was also owner at Fairway Markets, extending a career that links education, operations, and ownership without separating any one of them too neatly.

Where They Are Now

No current role is identified.

Signature

Cheese Primer is one of Steven’s signature dishes, and the name reads like a teaching tool as much as a plate. It fits a practice shaped by instruction and service: food that does not just land on the table, but carries a point of view about how flavor can be framed, explained, and shared.

In Their Words “I've brought one of my seven olive oils.” The line is precise without being self-serious. Seven olive oils suggests curation, range, and a willingness to treat ingredients as distinct tools rather than interchangeable stock. In Steven Jenkins’s phrasing, the joke sits right beside the method: select carefully, bring the right oil for the task, and let the collection do some of the talking.