Dear readers, food aficionados, and friends,

What can I say? It’s been a wild ride. These past four years of BenGusto™ have been filled with the most colorful memories of Alpine cheeses, honey farms, Austrian bakeries, chocolate mousse disasters, cooking classes, and family-style meals. I cannot thank you all enough for the support you have given me and my little “pet project.” What started as a blog I was doing “for the hell of it” grew into a difference-maker in my community, and I thank you for that!

Now that I have graduated high school (just last week, in fact), I see a new chapter for BenGusto on the horizon. The recipe archive will continue to grow, the website will continue to develop, and this small, food-oriented community will continue to offer new flavor to the dinner tables of many. The exact direction in which this brand will progress is unclear at the moment, as I don’t see BenGusto limited to one specific path or industry. (Perhaps we’ll see it expand out of the food industry?) My plans for BenGusto’s near future are in the development phase.

For now, I will continue to blog throughout the summer, documenting my journeys around Europe as usual. The blog will be mostly inactive for these next three to four weeks, as I embark on a large backpack tour with a few friends of mine. Afterward, I’ll be heading to Paris and bringing my cooking tools and camera along with me, as I work and live in The City of Light. I will be joining the marketing and PR team of La Belle Assiette, a startup company that has designed a beautiful website where European diners can hire and contact private chefs online (you can check them out here: La Belle Assiette).

After this summer, BenGusto will be shifting its operation over to California, where I’ll be attending school at Stanford University. We don’t need to worry too much about that now, though. Let’s look towards Paris!

Keep in touch, and stay hungry!

– Ben

One of the first pictures to appear on the BenGusto website: me, cooking lamb in Piemonte as a freshman in high school.

The first BenGusto™ post: a tomato-rosemary bread recipe.

16 years old, and working the pizza oven at the Agrihotel Elisabetta.

Serving the handmade pasta at IB Iron Chef (Feb. 2014).

Some early BenGusto Dining propaganda.

BenGusto appears in Ramin Ganeshram’s FutureChefs cookbook.

Making “Bencakes” at the Agrihotel last summer.

Four days of making cheese in the Swiss Alps.

The final BenGusto Buddy Cooking Class. It ended on a note of pizza!