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Clovis, CA – Rick Bayless, award-winning chef-restaurateur, cookbook author, and television personality will be on campus at the Clovis Institute of Technology Friday, July 23rd.

Fresh off of his trip to Washington D.C., where he was the guest chef for President Obama’s State Dinner at the White House, Bayless will be on campus from 8:00 to 11:00 a.m. to conduct a cooking demo, answer some questions from IOT students and guests, and promote his new book, “Fiesta at Rick’s,” which hits shelves this July.

The IOT campus is excited to welcome Bayless, star of the PBS show “Mexico: One Plate at a Time,” to the campus as a special treat for their hard-working culinary students and to the Clovis culinary community in general.

Bayless, who specializes in contemporary Mexican cooking, is known not only for his TV show and top restaurants in the Chicago area, Frontera and Topolobampo, but also for his catalog of cookbooks (“Fiesta at Rick’s” is his seventh).

In 1996, “Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen: Capturing the Vibrant Flavors of a World-Class Cuisine” won the International Association of Culinary Professionals’ (IACP) National Julia Child “Cookbook of the Year Award.”

The New York Times praised him as a writer who makes “true Mexican food user-friendly for Americans,” and Time Magazine hailed him as a “cookbook superstar.”

Additionally, Bayless has won several awards over the past two decades.  In 1995, he won a James Beard Award for “National Chef of the Year” as well as an award for “Chef of the Year” from the IACP.

In 1998, the Beard Foundation honored Rick as “Humanitarian of the Year.”  In 2002, Bon Appétit honored him with the “Cooking Teacher of the Year Award”.

“Chef Bayless is world-renowned for his authentic Mexican cooking style, and we feel honored to have him visiting our campus in anticipation of the release of his new book.  We hope that he can impart some of his vast and impressive knowledge of Mexican cuisine to our faculty and students,” said Clovis Campus President Joe Haydock.

“I am excited to spend some time with some of California’s future culinary stars at the Institute of Technology.  I always look forward to meeting those who share my passion for the culinary arts, and I understand that IOT students have that in abundance.” said Bayless.

He can be sure that they won’t disappoint.